Elderly Apples

The apple is a most mysterious fruit, agreed the British Association of Refrigeration when their President Sir William Bate Hardy told them, during their convention in London fortnight ago: "A stream of air which has passed over an apple . . . contains some subtle emanations which profoundly influence other vegetable forms. Potatoes placed in the stream either do not sprout or, if they do. the sprouts are misshapen dwarfs, more like warts than anything else. Bananas are excited to a much more rapid ripening than ordinarily. It is only elderly apples which pour out these emanations, and the effect on young unripe apples is again curious, for they are stirred to more rapid progress. They ripen more quickly. It is as though the elderly apple were "jealous of youth, and would destroy it."

The nature of those emanations is unknown. Sir William thinks that they are chemical individuals, that "their physiological activity must be prodigious, equaling or even exceeding that of snake venom. . . . Of what use is this power? Why can it so influence its fellow vegetables? In that lies the puzzle." Perhaps the emanations explain what warehousers of apples have known for a long time, "that there is a kind of communal life, a herd quality, in apples when stored together. They tend to and. indeed, they do ripen at much the same rate."

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