456 Transplanting Trees, Effects of Frost, &c. [October, 



I often usetlie phrase "winter-killed;" yet I do not like it, because 

 we never experience a degree of cold here that would affect trees in- 

 juriously, if the growth of wood was completely matured before cold 

 weather. Judging the future from the past, on the 2 7th of October, 

 1854, I wrote down a prediction that there would be a great destruc- 

 tion of fruit trees the ensuing winter, and never was evil prophecy 

 more literally fulfilled. The same has been true several winters since, 

 and last winter was a most signal illustration of the same fact. In 1851, 

 the early part of the season had been rather unpropitious to a rapid 

 early growth ; August was very dry, and retarded the commencement 

 of the late growth; and September, and October, being warm and 

 showery, stimulated the trees to a vigorous late growth. On the 

 20th of October a very rapid flill in the thermometer occurred, and 

 with the leaves on the trees as green as midsummer, a very heavy 

 frost came on, and completely destroyed their vitality; and the mo- 

 ment that happened, that wonderful chemical laboratory that had 

 been converting sap into woody fiber, ceased its operations as sud- 

 denly as a steam engine when the boiler bursts. 



Every pore of the wood was filled to repletion with a watery fluid, 

 that the tree was powerless either to throw off or assimilate. The 

 Bap became vitiated, and, on making an incision in the bark late in 

 the fall, a colored, watery fluid, sometimes highly acid, exuded. 



It is a well known law of nature that all fluids expand by freezing; 

 and in obedience to this law the trees, surcharged with watery fluid, 

 expand until the bark bursts, and on the return of mild weather the 

 "water escapes at the cleft made in the bark; the tree again contracts 

 to its natural size, the bark sometimes standing off to the fourth of 

 an inch from the wood, the winds of spring dry the bark in that po- 

 sition and the trees perish. 



When trees are in such a condition I doubt whether any of our 

 winters are so mild as not to kill them. Our mildest winters freeze 

 to their centers trees larger than any of our fruit trees. The coldest 

 can do no more. 



Now I will not say that the causes alluded to bring on the real 

 blight; but diseased sap, induces an unhealthy condition of the tree, 

 and brings on diseases that often pass under that name. 



I have now an orchard of one hundred and forty apple trees set 

 out fifteen years ago, and although I have occasionally had a tree 

 slightly injured, I know of no orchard that has come off better, and 



