22 HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



We are lumbering to-day the northern hemlock on the slopes of the 

 Shenandoah Mountain, where they exist, because of the air drainage, in 

 my opinion, from the mountain range, coming down the slopes, as it is 

 easy to see by the configuration of the mountain that the air* comes down. 

 Hemlocks are found away down the valley, where but for this air drainage, 

 1 believe there would not be a hemlock within a hundred miles, and here 

 they are, magnificent great specimens, with trunks six feet in diameter, 

 and making marketable timber 80 or 100 feet up the trunk. They are 

 there, and the only way you can account for their being there is the air 

 drainage from the mountain coming down into the warmer valleys bring- 

 ing with it the possibilities of a vegetation of another latitude altogether. 



Mr. SoiitJnvick — I think the factor omitted in what you just said 

 is this : 



I was brought up in Greene County, New York, and raised peaches 

 there and farmed it until I was twenty years old. I found by planting 

 our peach orchards on the north side of the hill, they were retarded in 

 their growth in spring, and to add to that, we tamped the snow around 

 the trees and kept them back a while longer, and we were free from 

 having the buds frozen, and from them we had some beautiful peaches. 

 We, kept the ground there cold and in this way the trees were kept back. 

 1 think that is a very important factor. 



Dr. Hansen — I would like to quote an experiment. I do not think 

 that the last speaker did keep back the buds of a tree. I would not like 

 to have that point passed without stating that the result of experiment 

 has shown that such a process will not keep back the blossoms of any 

 tree. 



Mr. Macoun — We have tried many careful experiments of tamping 

 the snow about the trees, and it does not keep back the buds at all. 



The President — I will supplement my remarks by saying I have a 

 peach orchard about 35 miles north of the city on a slope of a hill per- 

 haps nine hundred feet above the level of the sea, and that orchard has 

 not failed in giving a most satisfactory crop in fifteen years. That illus- 

 trates two things: first, it illustrates the vigor of the tree, that the peach 

 orchard should continue for fifteen years in a good condition. Secondly, 

 it also illustrates the principle I have been speaking of, that it is usually 

 uniform ; whereas, in the whole region around in the valley, they have 

 not had in this fifteen years this peach orchard has been fruiting, without 

 any exception — they have not had a peach crop in more than a third 

 of the time. I would say one thing further in regard to this particular 

 locality, an elevation of 900 feet, a northern slope where the sun does not 

 strike in winter, and where there is perfect air drainage. In my boy- 

 hood I used to go up to this point, and there was the greatest peach tree 

 I had ever seen. Its trunk was 22 inches in diameter and I found by 

 consulting the old people, that the age of that tree was over seventy 

 years. A peach tree in this latitude seventy years old, with a trunk 22 

 inches in diameter ! The property was not then in possession of my 



