Citrons,[1611] pomegranates,[1612] apples, quinces, and pears, were preserved in heaps of sand, grapestones, oak, poplar, deal, or cedar sawdust, sometimes sprinkled with vinegar, chopped straw, wheat, or barley, or the seeds of plants, all of which sufficed equally to exclude the external air. Another method with apples[1613] was to lay them up surrounded with sea-weed in unbaked jars, which were then deposited in an upper room free from smoke and all bad smells. When sea-weed was not procurable they put each apple into a small separate jar closely covered up and luted. These apple-jars were often lined with a coating of wax. Figs were, in like manner, preserved green[1614] by being enclosed in so many small gourds. Citrons and pomegranates were often suffered to remain throughout the winter on the tree, defended from wet and wind by being capped with little fictile vases bound tightly to the branches to keep them steady. Others enclosed these fruits, as well as apples, in a thick coating of gypsum, preventing their falling off by binding the stem to the branches with packthread. Nor was it unusual, even when gathered, to envelope apples, quinces, and citrons, in a covering of the same material, or potter’s clay, or argillaceous earth, mixed with hair, sometimes interposing between the fruit and this crust a layer of fig-leaves, after which they were dried in the sun. When at the end, perhaps, of a whole year the above crust was broken and removed the fruit came forth perfect as when plucked from the bough. It is possible, therefore, that, in a similar manner, mangoes, mangusteens, and other frail and delicate fruit of the tropics, might be brought fresh to Europe, and that, too, in such abundance as to make them accessible to most persons. To render pears and pomegranates durable, their stems were dipped in pitch, after which they were hung up. In the case of the latter the fruit itself was sometimes thus dipped; and, at other times, immersed in hot sea-water, after which it was dried in the sun. One mode of preserving figs was to plunge them in honey so as neither to touch each other, nor the vessel in which they were contained; another, to cover a pile of them with an inverted vase of glass, or other pellucid substance, closely luted to the slab on which it stood. Cherries were gathered before sunrise, and put, with summer savory above and below, into a jar, or the hollow of a reed, which was then filled with sweet vinegar, and closely covered. Mulberries were preserved in their own juice, apples and quinces in pitched coffers, wrapped in clean locks of wool, pears by being placed in salt[1615] for five days, and afterwards dried in the sun, as were also figs, which were strung by the stalks to a piece of cord or willow twig, like so many hanks of onions[1616] as they are sold in modern times. Elsewhere they were preserved, as dates in Egypt, by being pressed together in square masses, like bricks.[1617]