1856.] Effects of Frost on Dormant Vegetation, 291 



one gentleman " cut down his whole orchard of some two thousand trees 

 (peach) which, the autumn previous, had produced a bountiful crop ; " 

 " everybody was disappointed ; the spring and early summer opened 

 most propitiously, with genial showers and fine growing weather. The 

 trees soon put on their summer dress, just as fresh and fine as ever." 

 The same writer, speaking of the coming summer, says: "Everything 

 now indicates a fruitful season.'' This premature destruction is, indeed, 

 one of the greatest evils which a want of proper attention brings upon 

 those who ought to know better. 



I am still of the opinion (though, of course, I make no pretensions to 

 infallibility,) that " the mere freezing of plants in winter will not destroy 

 their vitality ;" but that their resuscitation or death depends mainly on 

 the circumstances attending the thawing of them after having been 

 frozen. I refer only to dormant vegetation, though the same mcnj also 

 be true with reference to active. All vegetation, in this region, has 

 been exposed during the past winter, to a temperature as low as 20 deg., 

 i. e., 52 degrees of frost, and what are the efi'ects? A walk through our 

 gardens, orchards and nurseries will show how astonishingly small the 

 damage has been. Mr. E., himself, admits that " the injury done to his 

 fruit was not so great as he had expected." [See report of Horticultural 

 Society's meeting, April 12, in Ojmmercial. ] On my own little spot, 

 I have peach, cherry, and plum trees in full bloom, gooseberries and cur- 

 rants displaying their tiny fruit ; and grapevines and rosebushes from 

 whose stems, during the cold weather, I picked out crystals of ice with 

 the point of a knife, developing themselves as if they had only had 

 their usual winter's nap. Now, if 52 degrees of frost will not kill " our 

 partly hardy exotics, such as the peach, cherry, pear, etc.," and their 

 tender fruit buds, when in a dormant state, what degree of frost will 

 kill them? What physiological change would ten or twenty degrees 

 more frost produce in a tree so as to cause its death ? I admit the truth 

 of the old proverb, that " circumstances alter cases," and that vegeta- 

 tation was last fall "never in a better condition to resist the effects of 

 ordinary temperature," or extraordinary either. Under different cir- 

 cumstances the effects of such a winter might have been disastrous 

 enough ; but this only goes to establish my point, that the mere freezing 

 of dormant vegetables will not kill them. 



Frost, say some, destroys vegetation, by separating the bark and con- 

 centric layers of wood, or bursting the cells containing the fluid, by 

 expansion. This, however, is not the case, as the bark, wood, and each 

 individual cell possesses an elasticity which prevents snch effects. If 

 such was, however, the case, young trees, whose cells contain most 



