ultural commissioners that have absolute police
power to make orchard men clean up. They will come into your old orchard
and pull it up and burn it and add it to your taxes, charge it up to
you, if you don't clean up. The same sort of police power should prevail
here. If a man has an old plum orchard that is diseased through and
through, it won't do for him to tell his tale of woe year after year and
not do anything. A county agent will come along and clean it up for him.
After it is cleaned up it will be an easier proposition. If you are not
going to keep up with the times and spray, then the county agent ought
to have police power to burn the orchard. Either spray or go out of the
plum business.

* * * * *

TO MAKE CONCENTRATED APPLE CIDER ON A COMMERCIAL SCALE.--The
specialists of the fruit and vegetable utilization laboratory of the
department have completed arrangements for a commercial test of the
recently discovered method of concentrating apple cider by freezing and
centrifugal methods. As a result, a cider mill in the Hood River Valley,
Ore., will this fall undertake to manufacture and put on the retail
market 1,000 gallons of concentrated cider, which will represent 5,000
gallons of ordinary apple cider with only the water removed.

The new method, it is believed, makes possible the concentrating of
cider in such a way that it will keep better than raw cider, and also be
so reduced in bulk that it can be shipped profitably long distances from
the apple growing regions. The old attempts to concentrate cider by
boiling have been failures because heat destroys the delicate flavor of
cider. Under the new method nothing is taken from the cider but the
water, and the resultant product is a thick liquid which contains all
the apple-juice products and which can be restored to excellent sweet
cider by the simple addition of four parts of water. The shippers and
consumers, therefore, avoid paying freight on the water in ordinary
cider. In addition, the product, when properly barreled, because of its
higher amount of sugar, keeps better than raw cider, which quickly turns
to vinegar.

The process, as described by the department's specialists, consists of
freezing ordinary cider solid. The cider ice is then crushed and put
into centrifugal machines such as are used in making cane sugar. When
the cider ice is whirled rapidly the concentrated juice is thrown off
and collected. The water re