The chemical analyses of the ciders show that, in general, Minnesota apples do not contain relatively high percentages of sugars.  This varies with the season and increases with maturity.  The highest total sugar content in ripe apples has been found in the Charlamoff at 9.25 per cent., followed in order by Whitney, 9.08 per cent., Wealthy 8.81 per cent., Duchess 8.60 per cent., Patten 8.21 per cent., Hibernal 7.85 per cent., and Longfield at 7.17 per cent.  The significance of these figures is seen when the statement is made that it usually takes two per cent. sugars to make one per cent. of acetic acid.  With the majority of our apples we must work carefully, or the vinegar will not meet the state standard of four per cent. acetic acid.  This is further substantiated by the report of the State Dairy and Food Commission that the vinegar samples sent to them rarely come up to the standard.

From the data as we now have it we cannot draw definite conclusions, but in general it is safe to say that the making of vinegar from Minnesota apples is done on a close margin.  This will mean careful work to get the most out of the fermentation, the use of yeast, warm cellars or store rooms and proper management of the casks as to filling and the entrance of air.  The work is not expensive.  There is a good demand for really good vinegar, and a market is provided for fruit which could not readily be sold in any other form.

A Summer in Our Garden.

MRS. GERTRUDE ELLIS SKINNER, AUSTIN.

Summer in our garden begins with the arrival of the first seed catalogue in January, and closes the day before its arrival the next January.  We may be short on flowers in our garden, but we are long on seed catalogues in our library.  We do not believe in catalogue houses excepting seed catalogues.  We find them more marvelous than the Arabian Nights, more imaginative than Baron Manchausen, and more alluring than a circus poster.  We care not who steals the Mona Lisa so long as Salzer sends us pictures of his cabbages.  The art gallery of the Louvre may be robbed of its masterpiece without awakening a pang in our breasts, if Dreer will only send us the pictures of those roses that bloom in the paint-shops of Philadelphia.  Morgan may purchase the choicest collections of paintings in Europe and hide them from the public in his New York mansion, if May will send us pictures of watermelons, such as were never imagined by Raphael, Michael Angelo or Correggio.

While the world watches the struggle for the ownership of some great railway system, the control of some big trust, the development of some enormous enterprise, we watch for the arrival of the seed catalogue to see which artist can get the most cabbages in a field, the most melons on a cart, or make the corn look most like the big trees of Yosemite.  Don’t talk to us of the pleasures of bridge whist, it is not to be compared with the seed catalogue habit.