is little danger of their
being blown away. As they dry, however, the current of air should be
more gentle.

The practice of storing powdered herbs in paper or pasteboard packages
is bad, since the delicate oils readily diffuse through the paper and
sooner or later the material becomes as valueless for flavoring
purposes as ordinary hay or straw. This loss of flavor is particularly
noticeable with sage, which is one of the easiest herbs to spoil by bad
management. Even when kept in air-tight glass or tin receptacles, as
recommended, it generally becomes useless before the end of two years.

[Illustration: Paper Sacks of Dried Herbs for Home Use]

When large quantities of herbs are to be cured a fruit evaporator may be
employed, the herbs being spread thinly upon wire-bottomed trays so that
an ample current of air may pass through them. Care must be taken to
keep the temperature inside the machine below 120 degrees. The greatest
efficiency can be secured by placing the trays of most recently gathered
herbs at the top, the partially dried ones being lowered to positions
nearer the source of heat. In this way the fresh, dry, warm air comes in
contact first with the herbs most nearly dried, removes the last
vestige of moisture from them and after passing through the intervening
trays comes to those most recently gathered.

[Illustration: Hand Cultivator and Scarifier]

Unless the evaporator be fitted with some mechanism which will permit
all the trays to be lowered simultaneously, the work of changing the
trays may seem too irksome to be warranted. But where no changes of
trays are made, greater care must be given to the bottom trays because
they will dry out faster than those at the top. Indeed in such cases,
after the apparatus is full, it becomes almost essential to move the
trays lower, because if fresh green herbs, particularly those which are
somewhat wet, be placed at the bottom of the series, the air will become
so charged with moisture from them that the upper layers may for a time
actually absorb this moisture and thus take longer to dry. Besides this,
they will surely lose some of their flavoring ingredients--the very
things which it is desired to save.

No effort should be made to hasten the drying process by increasing the
temperature, since this is likely to result as just mentioned. A
personal experience may teach the reader a lesson. I once had a large
amount of parsley to cure and thought to expedite