Jane 18, 1874.] 



JOURNAL OF HOBTICDLTUBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



483 



it with the knife, it might do as well as Mis3 Whittle's or my 

 own smaller one ? 



As I am writiDg on the subject of yellow climbing Roses, I 

 would again say a word on behalf of EOve d'Or, which for 

 covering a wall with beauty of foliage and flower is, I think, 

 unequalled. At the present moment there is one on the east 

 wall of my house which is a perfect picture. It was planted 

 there three years ago. It is now 22 feet high, covered with 

 dense foliage from the ground, and full of bloom. I counted 

 on one branch a yard long sixteen blooms. In richness of 

 colour it far exceeds Solfaterre, and is equally free in blooming. 

 In speaking of it in laudatory terms to Mr. George Paul he 

 quite agreed with me, and called it, not inaptly, a climbing 

 Madame Falcot. I would recommend anyone who wishes to 

 have a wall rapidly and well covered with a very beautiful Rose 

 to plant it. — D., Deal. 



NOTES ON FEOST AND ITS EFFECTS. 



Like many other terms in everyday use, there seems to be 

 more than one meaning attached to the word frost. The scien- 

 tific man, putting his thermometer outside on his window-ledge, 

 notes the figure to which the mercury has descended during the 

 preceding night, and if it has gone as low as or lower than 32'^ 

 he books it accordingly, regardless of what other tokens there 

 may be in a more natural way, as the stiffening of wet cloths, 

 or of herbage of any kind, as well as now and then congealing 

 water. The philosopher pays little heed to these ; his instru- 

 ments are his guides, and by them his idea of heat and cold 

 is regulated. On the other hand, the country labourer look- 

 ing out on a summer morning and seeing a very heavy dew 

 shining white, almost glistening with the rising sun, and feel- 

 ing the air more chilly than it was at mid-day the day before, 

 pronounces it a frost, without waiting to see whether anything 

 has been stiffened by it ; and his observation, like that of the 

 man of science, is hardly borne out by the facts of the matter. 

 Frost, to deserve the name, should be sufficiently intense to 

 stiffen or solidify objects moistened by water or other liquids 

 of a like kind, or it may be inert substances charged with 

 water or other liquids not of a nature difficult to congeal. 

 There are circumstances under which frost shows itself more 

 conspicuously than in others. Generally speaking, inert non- 

 conducting substances, as wet straw, litter, leaves, cloths, 

 matting, boarding, and the like, show signs of frost when none 

 is to be seen on the naked ground, and still less on water. 

 Winds may either modify or intensify the cold, and it is hardly 

 necessary to say that elevation has also a great effect. All 

 these considerations, acting together or in part, may be taken 

 as so many fixed laws bearing on the subject; but then there 

 are exceptions, or it may be exemptions, of a kind more diffi- 

 cult to explain, in which frost exhibits a sort of capricious- 

 ness in attacking certain things and certain places, while 

 others that appear to be equally exposed escape. Every season 

 presents such freaks, and the reasons given to account for 

 them are often as capricious as the attack. The young shoots 

 of a coppice may be all cut by frost in a certain line running 

 through a wood of several acres, while right and left of that 

 line no damage may be done, or the line may have escaped 

 while the rest is cut. The notion has been that a current of air 

 blowing through in the direction indicated may either have 

 saved them or been the cause of the damage, just as the wind 

 was cold or otherwise ; but this is not always a just con- 

 clusion, for I have known a frosted belt, of say 50 yards wide, 

 running through a wood at a time when the wind was at right 

 angles to it ; and, moreover, we sometimes see the lower twigs 

 of the shoots damaged by frost, and the top ones escape, even 

 in coppices not 10 feet high. I wUl now pass on to notify the 

 effects of frosts on the more important horticultural objects 

 we are interested in. 



Taken as a whole, May, 1874, has presented us with a greater 

 number of frosty days than any previous May during the last 

 twenty years. Frosts quite as sharp and quite as late have 

 occurred before, but I have no record during the above time of 

 as many as eight decidedly frosty mornings, and five more 

 that nearly approached being so, or which showed frost at 

 some part a very short distance from the place of observation. 

 The past month must therefore be looked upon as being an 

 extraordinary one in that respect. Well, what has been the 

 result ? To this inquiry very conflicting answers wiU be given, 

 and I expect frost will be charged with the loss of many 

 thoDsands of bushels of fruit of all kinds, as well as damage 

 to Peas, Potatoes, and other vegetables, and I do not know 



how much injury to the grass crop and check to the growth 

 of trees, shrubs, Ac. I am not going to assert that frost 

 does no harm, it would be simply absurd to do so ; but I 

 sometimes think that other causes have been at work as well. 

 The remark of a very old friend of mine, one who has been in 

 the habit of sending many thousands of bushels of fruit to 

 market every year for nearly half a century, has more weight 

 in it than some would suppose. He says he " does not care 

 very much for a frost, but he is afraid of a fever." In other 

 words, he does not think the frost does so much harm if it is 

 not quickly followed by a bright sun ; and what I have noticed 

 of the effects of frost the past season justifies the opinion of 

 my venerable friend, whose years of observation (not me- 

 chanical but natural) entitle him to respect. Certainly there 

 were one or two of the sharpest frosts we had the past May 

 which confirms the belief that the " fever," or tbe bright sun, is 

 the evU most to be dreaded. One of the cases was as follows : — 



The evening of May 9th, showing every appearance of frost, 

 I placed a basin of water out of doors on a grass plat near my 

 cottage, and in the morning, about .5 a.m., the water was so 

 hard frozen as to allow the basin to be turned upside down 

 without any coming out, in fact the ice was thicker than the 

 oldest-fashioned pennies. Now, on a south border, at a dis- 

 tance of less than 200 yards, were some Potatoes growing, 

 also some Dwarf Kidney Beans that had just made their ap- 

 pearance above ground, and the occurrence of a frost so severe 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of these crops would have led 

 to the expectation that both would be injured if not destroyed ; 

 yet such was not the case, for neither of them appeared 

 injured, although the Kidney Beans certainly looked yellow, 

 and can hardly be expected to be much of a crop, yet I attribute 

 that to the prolonged cold weather rather than to this particular 

 frost ; but what saved them and the Potatoes from the " fever " 

 alluded to was some high trees to the east, which checked the 

 action of the sun until the frost had gradually disappeared. 

 The Potatoes look as well as need be ; but the Kidney Beans, 

 from the long period of cold weather we had, were starved, 

 and will not be worth much ; but it is certain the frost did not 

 kill them, although I find it is blamed for injuring crops of a 

 more hardy kind. Peas in an advanced state have been 

 seriously damaged, and more than one field near here so 

 badly cut that it was contemplated to plough them up, and 

 that about the time they were coming into flower, but some 

 delay taking place they have recovered wonderfully. Clover 

 has also been injured, but not more than has been the case in 

 former years ; but I do not hear of anyone remembering the 

 Peas sufi'ering so much before. Potatoes, of course, have 

 suffered in places, but here, as in the case of the young growth 

 of the coppice plantation, the attacks have been capricious, and 

 difficult to account for, elevation and open exposure not always 

 affording a reason for the attack. I am not sure, after all, 

 that the damage from frost is greater than in average years. 

 In general the ground was dry, and although one or two morn- 

 ings were bright and promising, all the frosty mornings were 

 not so, and if I ventured an opinion as to the relative injuries 

 inflicted by the frost and that caused by the prolonged cold 

 weather, I should be inclined to blame the latter the most. 



Into the effect of the frost on the fruit crop I do not intend 

 at present to enter, as the accounts are so conflicting that it is 

 difficult to make any approach to a just opinion. As regards 

 other crops I attribute the evil as much to the cold dull weather 

 as to the frosts. A glance at the character of the season 

 reveals a somewhat singular state of things. The weather in 

 the early part of April was not remarkable, but during the 

 latter half of the month was very fine, warm, and dry, hurry- 

 ing on vegetation and forcing out the fruit blossom with more 

 rapidity than was consistent with the due setting of the fruit ; 

 but a change took place on the last day of the month, when 

 cold weather set in, which with frequent frosts continued up to 

 the 21st of May, after which fine weather again set in, the 

 transition being rapid rather than gradual ; and the last ten 

 days in May and the first week in .June have been as remark- 

 able for their warmth as the preceding period was for cold. 



One especial feature in the weather this year must be noticed ; 

 it has been an unusually dry winter and spring, for I find the 

 rainfall of the six months, from December 1st, 1873, to 

 May 31st of the present year, has been slightly under 7 inches, 

 which is less than in any other similar period during the last 

 twenty years, excepting that ending May, 1858, while in many 

 seasons there falls double that quantity. One good effect of 

 the absence of rain is the condition the ground is in ; in most 

 places the stiff adhesive cl.iy lands work mellow and pleasantly, 



