■Q^^^^4 



resulted in frost on the morning of the 21st. By this time it was evident that of some 

 five hundred trees that had exhibited apparently fair health less than one month 

 before, full one-half were substantially ruined — some being dead (as the result soon 

 after showed), root and branch, others killed to the ground merely, and others still 

 having here and there a live limb. The remaining half were injured less in various 

 degrees. Soon after flowering there was a considerable development of the " curled 

 leaf" malady, though I think it was less than in 1851. This attack was to have 

 been expected, if the principles laid down in an article in your paper for February, 

 1851, were correct, the general character of the weather in the two cases having been 

 very similar. It deserves to be noticed that trees that stood in the grass, and so had 

 made less succulent wood the preceding year, were less injured. I have read in your 

 paper general statements of the extensive death of the peach during the last severe 

 winter. It would be gratifpng to know whether this destruction was occasioned by 

 an influence acting strictly during the winter, or whether, as in my own experience, it 

 was, more properly, the influence of an irregular spring. I closed my articles one 

 year ago, when writing on the " curled leaf," in a tone of considerable confidence in 

 the possibility of cultivating the peach somewhat successfully, even in Oneida county ; 

 but the experience of 1852 is, I acknowledge, not a little discouraging. Others about 

 me, with a few trees, on a heavier and less excitable soil, have suflfered less than 

 myself. A tree of mine, also, that is budded on a plum root, has been vigorous. But 

 it is sufiiciently obvious that, in a climate with such liabilities, the cultivation of the 

 peach must ever be precarious. 



