492 THE GARDENER. [Nov. 



occasioned through some well-known agency. Severe winters have in 

 some instances destroyed the trees themselves ; the bloom and fruit in 

 embryo have been injured by spring frosts where protection had been 

 used as well as where it had not been employed ; neglect of the trees 

 the preceding season, together with other causes more or less explain- 

 able, have often occasioned the complete loss of a crop. 



This season's failure, however, cannot reasonably be attributed to 

 any of the above-mentioned causes. Some other hypothesis may be 

 safely advanced before we correctly ascertain the real cause or causes 

 of such a general failure of one of our best fruits. 



It is the opinion of wise amateurs, and even experienced gardeners 

 recommend in their directions to those that they believe require a cer- 

 tain amount of teaching, that protection to the bloom from spring frosts 

 of the more tender and early-flowering kinds of fruit-trees — such as 

 Apricots, Peaches, and Nectarines — is necessary to secure a crop. This 

 is certainly good advice so far as it goes ; but might I ask. Is the evil 

 not often done before protection is thought of? I would also ask, 

 Whether protection from spring frosts is all that is required 1 I rather 

 doubt it. Those who are in the habit of protecting their trees ever so 

 carefully, now and then sustain the loss of a crop, as well as those do 

 who allow their trees to take their chance. This season, particularly, 

 protection has not availed in any case that I am acquainted with in 

 this neighbourhood (Mid Kent). From careful observations which I 

 have made for several years past as to the time of blooming of the 

 Peach (which time of blooming varies but slightly, unless there is a long 

 duration of one sort of weather), I invariably find that the later the 

 trees are of blooming, the more certainty there is of a crop. During 

 the month of February last, sunshine prevailed more than usual for 

 that month of the year all over the country. The consequence was, 

 that trees on a southern aspect were excited into bloom before the 

 danger of an adverse change in the weather was over. March con- 

 tinued throughout damp and cloudy, with an unusually low tempera- 

 ture, which was anything but favourable for trees in bloom. The long- 

 dormant state of the sap, after it had been once excited, no doubt was 

 the principal cause of the fruit dropping off. By shading Apricots, 

 Peaches, and Nectarines growing against a south wall from the direct 

 rays of the sun during the latter part of February and the beginning 

 of March, thereby retarding the blooming period until all danger of a 

 check to the sap after it had commenced its flow upwards was past, a 

 crop might at all times be relied upon. 



In the case of Orchard-houses, where a steady but increasing tem- 

 perature could not be maintained, the failure is equally as bad as it is 

 with trees in the open air. With Peach-houses, on the other hand, 



