"Fruit for storing should be gathered before it is quite mature, for the ripening process, the formation of sugar, with its attendant exhalation of carbonic acid and water, goes on as well in the fruit room as in the open air at the season when the functions of the leaves have ceased, and the fruit no longer enlarges. In gathering fruit, every care should be adopted to avoid bruising; and, to this end, in the case of apples, pears, quinces, and medlars, let the gathering basket be lined throughout with sacking, and let the contents of each basket be carried at once to a floor covered with sand, and taken out one by one, not poured out, as is too usual, into a basket, and then again from this into a heap, for this systematic mode of inflicting small bruises is sure to usher in decay, inasmuch as that it bursts the divisional membranes of the cells containing the juice, and this being extra-vasated, speedily passes from the stage of spirituous fermentation to that of putrefaction. To avoid this is the principal object of fruit storing, whilst at the same time it is necessary that the fruit shall be kept firm and juicy.

Now it so happens, that the means required to secure the one also effects the other.

"To preserve the juiciness of the fruit, nothing more is required than a low temperature, and the exclusion of the atmospheric air. The best practical mode of doing this is to pack the fruit in boxes of perfectly dried pit-sand, employing boxes or bins, and taking care that no two apples or pears touch. The sand should be thoroughly dried by fire-heat, and over the uppermost layer of fruit the sand should form a covering nine inches deep.

"Putrefaction requires indispensably three contingencies - moisture, warmth, and the presence of atmospheric air, or at least of its oxygen. Now burying in sand excludes all these as much as can be practically effected; and it excludes, moreover, the light, which is one of the prime agents in the ripening of fruit. The more minutely divided into small portions animal or vegetable juices may be, so much longer are they preserved from putridity: hence one of the reasons why bruised fruit decays more quickly than sound; the membranes of the pulp dividing it into little cells, are ruptured and a larger quantity of the juices are together; but this is only one reason, for bruising allows the air to penetrate, and it deranges that inexplicable vital power, which whilst uninjured acts so antiseptically in all fruits, seed, and eggs. Bruises the most slight, therefore, are to be avoided; and instead of putting fruit in heaps to sweat, as it is ignorantly termed, but in fact to heat and promote decay, fruit should be placed one by one upon a floor covered with dry sand, and the day following, if the air be dry, be wiped and stored away as before directed.

Fruit for storing should not only be gathered during the middle hours of a dry day, but after the occurence of several such.

"Although the fruit is stored in sand, it is not best for it to be kept there up to the very time of using, for the presence of light and air is necessary for the elaboration of saccharine matter. A fortnight's consumption of each sort should be kept upon beach, birch, or elm shelves, with a ledge all round, to keep on them about half an inch in depth of dry sand; on this the fruit rests softly, and the vacancy caused by every day's consumption should be replaced from the boxes as it occurs. If deal is employed for the shelving, it is apt to impart a flavour of turpentine to the fruit. The store-room should have a northern aspect, be on a second floor, and have at least two windows, to promote ventilation in dry days. A stove in the room, or hot-water pipe with a regulating cock, is almost essentialj for heat will be required occasionally in very cold and in damp weather; the windows should have stout inside shutters. Sand operates as a preservative, not only by excluding air and moisture, but by keeping the fruit cool; for it is one of the worst conductors of heat, and moreover it keeps carbonic acid in contact with the fruit.

All fruit in ripening emits carbonic acid, and this gas is one of the most powerful preventives of decay known.

"The temperature of the fruit room should never rise above 40°, nor sink below 34° of Fahrenheit's thermometer, the more regular the better. Powdered charcoal is even a better preservative for packing fruit than sand; and one box not to be opened until April, ought to be packed with this most powerful antiseptic. If it were not from its soiling nature, and the trouble consequent upon its employment, I should advocate its exclusive use; I have kept apples perfectly sound in it until June.

"It is not unworthy of observation, that the eye or extremity farthest from the stalk, is the first to ripen. This is most perceptible in pears, especially in the chaumontelle. That end therefore should be slightly imbedded in the sand; and thus excluding it from the light, checks its progress in ripening." - Principles of Gardening.