62 Second Annual Report 



the northern slope gets only 50 per cent when the sun is 60° high, 

 its height on a summer noon. If the sunshine is worth anything, 

 we want all there is of it. 



I undertake to say that from the time the tree is planted 

 until its fruit drops into your basket, the most important item is 

 the amount of sunshine you give it. Last year, with the excep- 

 tion of peaches, which do not really belong in this part of the 

 country, we had a very abundant fruit crop, but the winter 

 that preceded it was the severest on record. Yet we are fond 

 of saying that it is the cold winters that spoil our fruit. The 

 hardiness of the trees and the hardiness of the buds depend more 

 largely upon the amount of sunshine they received the summer 

 and fall before, than upon the mildness of the winter. A year 

 ago last summer was a summer of sunshine, luckily for us. In 

 the early part of the summer there was a little too much of 

 it. And you remember those autumn days, bright, warm and 

 glorious, extending the summer way over into November 

 Every tree was drinking it in and building up its tissue, and 

 the consequence was, the ability to stand the winter. 



Oliver Wendell Holmes was once asked, if he wanted to 

 raise a good man, if he would not wish to begin young with 

 him? "Yes," he said,, "quite young." Well, how young was 

 asked, how early do you think his training ought to begin? 

 "Why," he says, "I should like to begin with his grandmother 

 when she was a child," Every winter about this time I see 



