64 Second Annual Report 



This is an item we should consider,, and in setting an orchard 

 we should select a sunny situation. Isn't it strange that we don't 

 think more about that in horticulture? You would think a man 

 a fool who would try to raise oranges in Vermont because he 

 owned the land there, or who would build a hotel in the woods 

 because lumber was cheap there. If we are going into the rais- 

 ing of fruit, we must ask where the best section in the world 

 for the growing of that particular kind of fruit may be found? 

 If we must grow it where we are, then we must select the best 

 plot of ground we have. We are fond of saying that apples 

 love water, because we have learned by experience that they do 

 best on land adjacent to large bodies of fresh water, like that 

 along the shores of Lake Ontario, Lake Michigan and in the 

 Champlain Valley of Vermont. We give several reasons why 

 the fruit grows so well in these favored locations. We say 

 for instance, that the water tempers the atmosphere and prevents 

 rapid changes ; and so it does, there is no question about the 

 benefit of that. In the Champlain Valley, which I know most 

 about, in the winter the great mass of water, which is a little 

 above freezing, keeps the superincumbent plane of ice very near 

 to the same point, and this greatly modifies the temperature 

 when the mercury has a tendency to go down to twenty below. 

 And in the summer time, that great mass of cool water, which 

 upon the surface never gets above 70°, except just along the 

 shore, drags heavily at the winged heels of the little agile 

 god of heat when he undertakes to climb into the nineties. 

 Others say it is the soil, the limestone. Some think that it is 

 the constant breeze that is blowing in that region that is to 

 have the credit for the fruit crop. Sometimes it blows a little 

 too much, and the farmers don't feel very kindly toward the 

 wind, as they see so much fine fruit strewing the ground. Some 

 say that it is the absence of a fog that makes this location suit- 

 able for apple growing. Let us give credit to all these things, 

 but I venture to say that it is the amount of sunshine that falls 

 upon these lands, more than anything else, that makes the trees 

 produce so lavishly, and gives a high color and rich flavor to the 

 fruit. The Champlain lies wide open to the sun, and all the 

 orchard lands upon its islands and along its shores are com- 

 paratively level. Within ten minutes of the time set by Robert 

 B. Thomas for its rising, the sun is already above the hills of 

 the Green Mountains, and is pouring its flood of warmth and life 

 down upon every acre of that land, and it continues to pour 

 that flood of warmth and force upon that land until within five 

 minutes of the time when it goes down with a bang over behind 

 the Plattsburg barracks. As there is no fog, night or morning, 

 there is nothing to obstruct the sun's rays. That is the most 



