FORTIETH ANNUAL REPORT. 183 



uot grow in wet soggy soil ; in other words, it will not stand "wet feet." 



The seventh factor that I want to take up is dumping ground. The 

 San Jose killed off trees; the curl leaf made some trouble; root rot, 

 which perhaps can be put in that group, have all been instrumental in 

 doing a lot of damage. 



The eighth point is simply pure neglect. Cultivation and fertilization, 

 pruning and spraying were left out. If a man neglects his orchard that 

 will be a loss to him. I do not however, feel that we should discuss 

 these particular ]>oints because it is to the interest of every individual to 

 attend to his orchard along these lines. So we will turn our attention to 

 those injuries that are not so readily avoidable or that require more care- 

 ful consideration than cultivation and general care of an orchard. 



First I want to speak of frosting. Beginning with the great freeze in 

 1899 we have had a series of misfortunes in this state. I have visited 

 the Michigan peach orchards and studied them very carefully every year 

 except this year. That freeze was an awful hard blow on the Michigan 

 peach growers, but nevertheless they turned in and produced a lot of fruit 

 afterwards. Indeed, it was remarkable how the trees recovered from 

 that freeze. Practically every peach tree in the state was more or less 

 affected — were soggy and hard, had dry rot in the center or something 

 of the kind. Many trees broke down and old orchards went to pieces 

 after that. 



TheiT there was a hard freeze again in January, 1904, that put many 

 orchards out of commission. It was felt in New York and New England. 

 Then we have had another freeze since then that has done more or less 

 damage. There were a great many dead trees that year and most of 

 these dead trees were on dry, sandy knolls, particularly where the snow 

 blew off and here and there in many orchards, individual trees. I noticed 

 these dead trees because we could hardly figure out why these trees froze 

 out on the sandy knolls. It was a clear case of winter kill. The ground 

 was bare and dry. The trees were frozen in their roots. It is the very 

 thing that ^Ir. Rose was talking about and I am glad that he has appre 

 ciated that problem and has solved it. 



What about these dead trees that died on good land in apparently 

 the same way? When the growers were pulling out these trees, this 

 curious fact developed — ^that every one or practically every one that 

 we examined were attacked by the fungus root rot. They were going 

 along all right and bore their crop of fruit, but they were weaker and 

 when that freeze came they were all too weak to stand it and so went 

 down. It was such a time as this, and of the same nature, thot in Octo- 

 ber, 1906, struck the peach belt and did so much damage. 



Are these things to be expected in the future? We have all kinds of 

 extremes, so that some year in the distance there may be a freeze in 

 October, but probably it will not come again for 'a hundred years. That 

 is, it would not be expected to occur within our lifetime in any ordinary 

 peach orchard. Now if a large part of this trouble is frost injury, and 

 I think this audience will agree with me in the main, that means that 

 we have a fair show to plant orchards and avoid that sort of a thing in 

 the future. 



You have had an unusual combination of bad seasons for frost and the 

 chances are that you will not have the same things again and if the aver- 

 age of weather conditions maintain, you will be free from such occur- 



