STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 159 



for that vicinity. Just a month ago a fruit-grower called at my place and 

 I told him I was not materially injured. Says he : "How is that? My 

 two-year-olds are killed, and I had to cut them back in order to get any 

 kind of growth out of them. I consider myself damaged two thousand 

 dollars on my small piece of ground." His apple orchard was about six 

 years old, and was looking very well. I told liim I had no difficulty 

 about that. Then he said : "How far is it to water down here? What 

 kind of a sub-soil have you?" I said : "At the bottom of my cellar I 

 struck a bed of sand seventeen and one-half feet thick. Four to six feet 

 below the surface there is a current of water." He said: "That is 

 your immunity about this thing, for your trees can reach down to the 

 water, and do very well, and have their sap flowing when the cold weather 

 sets in.'' 



Mr. McAfee — This subject is very interesting, but I think there is 

 one branch of it which is neglected. If any force is brought to bear on 

 any animal or plant that is against it in nature, that plant or animal, to 

 resist to the best possible point, should have its full vigor, and its full 

 powers of life and resistance ; and if that plant is in any way weakened or 

 enervated by any thing that has liappened recently, it is incapable of 

 undergoing this stress. 



Now, look at our seasons for a few years past in Northern Illinois ; 

 we shall find that for three years past it has suffered from droughts, especi- 

 ally last fall, and especially during the latter part of the season, when the 

 buds were being perfected, when the stores of plant nourishment were to 

 be laid away, just at the time when the plant was in a flaccid, drooping, 

 weakened condition. There was not water enough to make its leaves 

 soft, and there were not juices sufficient to produce the starch which must 

 be laid aside for plant food. Perennial plants lay away the food in late sum- 

 mer and fall to start in the spring ; and if you cut them off early from all 

 sources of nourishment, they will grow for a while in the spring, perhaps, 

 but not long ; they must have that food laid up. Trees in a condition 

 described could not possibly store this food, as the osmos work, which is 

 going on from cell to cell, if there was not turgidity enough in the plant, 

 could not take place properly ; the starch granules could not be born, 

 and therefore the plant would die. 



The roots were quite dry and solid until the frosts of winter came — 

 there was not a particle of mud to impede the running of wagons in our 

 section of the country. I believe right there lies the cause of the trouble 

 last winter. It was a different thing to killing plants by excessive 



