564 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



"to know; and, while our practical work is connected with mysteries, if we be- 

 lieve in progress we must let no fact escape us. 



THE VALUE OF PROTECTION. 



The general idea of the value of protection from prevailing winds may be 

 -correct when considered by itself, but there are facts to be observed in connec- 

 tion with the airy locations which may have very much to do iu accouuting 

 for their productiveness. 



VALLEYS 



Teach a higher temperature under a midday sun than adjacent hills, and, on 

 the contrary, at night they are found to be cooler, giving a wider alternation 

 between day and night temperature ; and, if evenness of temperature is an ad- 

 vantage, by promoting a more steady growth or in any other way, then the 

 bills have the advantage. 



THE PRESENT YEAR, 1875, 



abounds in useful lessons to us, and especially does it show us a difference be- 

 tween hill and valley as regards the occurrence of extreme cold and the effect 

 ■upon our trees. It has been a popular idea that, as mountain tops are cold, 

 bills, too, must be colder than the plains, and, in average temperature, they 

 iprobably are ; yet, as affecting the wintering of tender fruits, we find the hills 

 have the advantage. It is not the average cold but extreme cold which hurts 

 "Our trees, and, at times of stillness, the air out of doors obeys the same la\f 

 that it does in a closed room. 



THERMOMETRICAL EXPERIMENTS. 



Many years ago I commenced a series of thermometrical experiments at two 

 ipoints on my farm, which were about sixty rods apart, — the one point a knoll, 

 ithe other a swale; the first being about thirty feet higher than the latter. 

 The experiments were at times of very little or no wind. The least 

 -difference found was 3*^, the greatest 11'^. At one time of protracted and 

 apparently perfect stillness, a difference of 27"^ was found between a wide and 

 deep valley and the hill tops on each side, as indicated by one thermometer on 

 • each hill and two in the valley. On one of the still nights of the past winter, 

 ■on taking two thermometers a short distance into a slight hollow, mercury 

 •went down 9*^, and on carrying them to the crown of a ridge which formed a 

 side of the same hollow, and only a stone's throw distant, the mercury rose S'*, 

 while the altitude was only eleven feet more, making about a degree in tem- 

 perature for a foot and a half in height. The instruments were then taken 

 into a deep hollow about eighty rods distant, when the mercury sunk ^S'*. In 

 the last instance, the difference in elevation was about one hundred and fifty 

 ,f 'et. 



THE EFFECTS 



of the past very cold winter are seen to correspond somewhat with the ther- 

 mometric indications where rows of tender varieties extend from hills down 

 into hollows ; and trees which were heavily pruned last season appear, in 

 many cases, to suffer as badly as those in hollows. 



On the approach of spring, whtn injury to bark of apple trees was found, it 



seemtd to be, as a rule, on the southerly side ; and we have been in the habit 



' of calling such ca&es S7in scald. But 1 have seen, in a number of pear orchards 



