STATE HOETICULTUKA.L SOCIETY. 119 



all parts witli iron liar and found no frost. Think our mulching did more evil 

 than good as it kept the ground too warm in winter and spring and the sap more 

 active out of season. In the fall of 1884 we had so far conquered the uncongenial 

 conditions bj' ©ur new methods of setting, trimming and top working that even 

 from our worst of all orchard sites we sent to New Orleans the finest specimens of 

 Wealthy, Wolf River, Dyre, Fall Orange, Pewaukee, Bennonia and many others 

 of like quality. We then felt that we were only one round below Pomona, even 

 then we had our arms raised to embrace her. But spring came and where was our 

 ladder we had labored from early maiihood till old age to build. Alas every round 

 nearly to the bottom broken and fallen all in one rude heap, with a world to pity 

 but no hand to save. Now as Buddah to Kilvana said, nothing can save a child 

 that's dead. 



PRESENT OF ORCBARDING IN NORTHWEST. 



To say that we are plunged in a gulf of dark despair would but feebly express the 

 sad condition we are in. No soil, slope, setting, leaninsr, trimming, protecting, 

 exposing or mulching, has saved our orchards. But there appears before us a new 

 lesson, and difficult as it may appear to us, we must search it out before we can 

 reach the goal of success in the Northwest. Nearly everybody looks upon the 

 causes of our calamities as something entirely new; we do not. It is only a new 

 combination of the same old troubles we have been battling for years, viz.: exces- 

 sive cold and untimely heat. We have studied this much, and differ with many. 

 We have held for muiy years that our principal trouble has come mainly from un- 

 timely heat rather than excessive cold. Cold injures and kills many tender trees 

 and shrubs but always shows first at the tips, keeping pace with the thermometer 

 in its downward course. In excessive cold, the twigs of some kinds we call hardy 

 appear to be injured but in this case the balance of the tree will remain uninjured. 

 We have shown our most hardy kinds to be much more discolored in the twigs 

 when the mercurj' sank no lower than fifteen degrees below zero, than they were 

 last winter with mercury below forty. The true cause of our present disaster lies 

 in the fact that the various elements were combined in an unusual manner. The 

 snow fell before the ground had frozen. Potatoes growing wherever we grew 

 them the Summer before. We have seen the like in other climes but never before 

 here. Have known the snow as deep, have seen it go off with the sun as late, have 

 seen it unfrozen when the snow fell, have seen it drift as little, but some of these con- 

 ditions were differently combined from what they were in the Winter of 1884 and 

 1885. Orchards received their first shock from a warm spell late in the Fall before 

 the ground froze. Nextly, warm sunny days in February and March which melted 

 the snow and settled it much, calling up the sap sunny days and suddenly freezing 

 it nights while up. This was often repeated. The first week in May we had a 

 very warm spell, everybody was hurrying up for planting. Some had planted, but 

 on the 7tli of May, when the blossom buds began to show red on the crabs there 

 came a remarkably sudden change. The northwest wind came sweeping down 

 from the way of Manitoba, making it so excessively cold that we could not run our 

 planter for cold and frost. These conditions continued three days unchanged. 



