A FRUIT FURNACE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 65, 10 December 1907, Page 2

A FRUIT FURNACE.

WHERE THE CONDEMNED SHIPMENTS PERISH. The fruit condemned from among the pestridden foreign shipments that arrive at Wellington is burned to doath in Sydney Street. At the' roar .of the Government chemist's laboratory, just over the fence, in tne grounds of the Parliamentary Buildings, a small, short, round brick furnace,.topped by a chimney correspondingly short", marks the spot where the incineration takes place. A man and a boy represent the staff. The man is armed with long rakish pokers with which anon-he stirs up the contents of the hot, hissing furnace. - The boy is busy, perhaps, with a pair of plumber's scissors opening a tin of kerosene. A pile .of full fruit cubes is the raw material. The man, holding, a small tin scoop to tne corner of a kerosene tin, tilts tho tin and makes the contents spurt out till the scoop is filled. Then tho nauseous fluid is poured to saturation over a. case of oranges. Some- of the oranges are blue-moulded; they are visible in the gaping cornnrs of tho case. But others, are spparontly good, and you murmur spontaneously, "What awful waste!" "It's got to be done," says tho man in charge piously, and again the kerosene flows down among the. golden fruits. Then he_ lifts tho case and hurls it into the scorching furnace. Thero is a sputter and a big blaze inside, and tho yellow llames run busily among the oranges. Fruit fly grubs no doubt wriggle in a sudden outburst of activity in their feeding grounds, and, peradventuro, make tracks for tho centres of tho fruits. But their escape is short-lived, and when the furnace is opened again for tho next stoking the cases inside* are seen to ho collapsed and tho fruits are cracked and charred to their centres. Occasionally a case, instead of making a clean flight into the furnace, strikes the doorway and falls to the ground—for the host of stokers will sometimes miss their mark. This accident necessitates some care, for in the fall some soft pulp ot infected fruits has squirted out ( and it may havo contained maggots, which would lilco to be spared to become flies by and by, to flit among our orchard trees and start a now race of fruit flies. The man in charge, however, knows what is expected of him, and with a longhandled shovel he gathers up the yollow spots of pulp and throws them into tho flames. A

few scoopfuls of kerosene are perhaps hurled into tho furnace, and you step farther uack as the fierce boat uniites your cheek. „« is a great business, • and it makes you thirsty and hungry to watch this wholesale destruction of fruit, some of which is doubtJess uninfected and luscious, and would cost twopence each nt tho Chinaman's. During tho last three or four days over 300 casea of Australian fruit have been thus destroyed Jhe furnace was in reality • built for uobler things. It is the firo in which parliamentary papers that have served their purpoao enu— like, some parliamentary speeches—in smoke.