New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 279 



Initial injuries resulting in crown-rot produced experimentally. — 

 Some apple trees in a seedling orchard consisting of various crosses 

 between different varieties had been discarded, on account of unde- 

 sirable qualities of their fruit. These trees were kindly given by 

 the Horticulturist of this Station for experimental tests. The ones 

 used for this preliminary experiment were crosses of the following 

 varieties: Two of them were Ben Davis X Mother, germinated in 

 1900; one Esopus X Ben Davis, and another Ben Davis X Mcintosh, 

 which were germinated in 1899. They were set about 3 m. apart 

 and were about the size of trees set 6 or 7 years. They bore full 

 crops of fruit when used in the experiment on September 14, 1911. 



The stem of each of the four trees used was encased in oilcloth 

 the overlapping edge of which was sealed down with shellac. Then 

 a sleeve from 70 to 85 cm. long was put around each trunk by rolling 

 together a piece of galvanized iron and tying it with wire in such a 

 way as to leave a space of about 8 cm. between it and the oilcloth 

 surrounding the stem. Sawdust to the depth of about 5 cm. was 

 tamped in the bottom of the galvanized iron cylinders around the 

 bases of the trunks. About equal parts of finely crushed ice and 

 calcium chloride were then added in alternating thin layers to the 

 depth of 30 to 40 cm. The space above the freezing mixture was 

 also filled with sawdust. By the time the last sawdust had been 

 added hoarfrost had formed on the outside of the galvanized iron in 

 the region of the freezing mixture. 



Ice was piled in the form of a cone around trees 2/9 (Ben Davis 

 X Mother) and 5/6 (Esopus X Ben Davis) up to the top of the 

 freezing apparatus and covered with sawdust. Four long radial 

 slits had been made in the bark of the trunks of numbers 2/9 and 

 5/6 before they were covered with oilcloth. 



A thermometer for measuring low temperatures not being avail- 

 able no record of the resulting temperatures was obtained, but it 

 seems conservative to estimate it at about — 25° C, thus allowing 

 a loss of nearly 20° C. by conduction. 



On September 16, two days after the freezing experiment was per- 

 formed, about a fourth of the foliage on the treated trees was dry 

 although still green, and much of the other drooped or curled more 

 or less. Many of the slender bearing twigs appeared to droop more 

 than those of neighboring untreated trees; all of which indicates that 

 water conduction had been interfered with by the freezing of the 

 trunks. The ice and salt in the galvanized iron cylinders had all 

 melted, but a few lumps of ice were still present in the sawdust 

 outside of two of them. 



The effect of the low temperatures on the bark of the enclosed 

 portion of the stems varied considerably, but it had been injurious on 

 all of them. On tree 1/25 (Ben Davis X Mother) which measured 

 31.9 cm. in circumference, the bark on the northwest side had a few 



