IRRIGATION FOR ORCHARD AND GARDEN. 235 



Question — If the ground under them was frozen wouldn't it make 

 a difference? 



Mr. Wilcox — The ground was frozen, but we packed this ice 

 around them as a precautionary measure. There is nothing in it 

 whatever. 



Prof. F. W. Card — At Cornell it was demonstrated very thor- 

 oughly that the blossoming depends on the temperature of the air and 

 ■not on the temperature of the soil. A branch of a tree that grew 

 near a window was brought inside by means of raising the sash, and 

 that branch went on and budded and blossomed inside while every- 

 thing outside was frozen up. 



Dr. Bessey — Mr. Chairman, just a word. This question has been 

 settled, but I want to get in my botanical word, because science always 

 settles these things after people have talked about them. The experi- 

 ment that Professor Card refers to demonstrates exactly what Mr. 

 Wilcox has said. The fact is that the plant has in it the means of 

 doing its own work. This error comes from another error that I have 

 been trying to root out of the horticultural societies of Iowa and Ne- 

 braska for a good many years. I have gotten it pretty well rooted 

 out, but I find the question occasionally coming up. That error is 

 the old theory that a tree in the fall runs its sap down into the ground, 

 and then in the spring it comes up out of the ground. That is abso- 

 lute error. Investigations have proved that there is more sap in a tree 

 • in the winter time than there is in the summer. In order to empha- 

 size the absurdity of this theory of the sap going down into the ground 

 in the fall and coming up out of the ground in the spring, I want to 

 tell you a story. An engineer engaged in some work in one of the 

 southern states was working up a canyon. He had observed every 

 once in a while there was a heavy freshet which he supposed to be 

 from a sudden rain up stream. One day, as he was working up stream, 

 suddenly the creek began to rise rapidly, and as he passed along he 

 met a native and said to him: "It must have been raining up the 

 canyon." 



The native looked at him and said : "Naw." 



" What does it mean ? " 



" It's a sap-rise." 



That didn't explain it to this engineer, and he said : " What's a 

 ^sap-rise'?" 

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