138 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
snuff, and unslaked lime, the whole sifted fine; adding a half quantity 
of lampblack, and mixing with urine and soapsuds to the consistency 
of thick paint. Old and young wood are dressed with this compound, 
with a painter’s brush, after the trees are pruned, avd they are then 
nailed, all from the upper side of the leading branches. 
Harrison’s walls are fued, but fire is used only to ripen the fruit in 
succession if required, and, in a very wet season, to ripen the wood after 
the fruit has been gathered, but never in spring. 
The advantages of this netting are very great. Harrison’s walls con- 
tain eight peach and eight nectarine trees. The netting is fixed and 
removed in two or three hours; it is put up when the blossoms can no 
longer be retarded, and remains until the end of May, when all danger 
from frostis over. The gardener can readily work under it. There are 
no blistered leaves, and the first shoots always ripen their wood, insar- 
ing fruit for the tollowing year. In 1854 these trees ripened over one 
thousand dozens of fruit, and the yield has never been less since netting 
has been used. The fruit was thinned early in June, when three hundred 
dozens nectarines and fifty-four dozens peaches were removed—young 
fruit, of full size—and further thinning was requisite after stoning.* 
Ktienne Pro suggests the following process for sheltering vines in 
espalier, and even in vineyards, from spring frosts: Take about ten 
bushels of wood ashes, or others, to forty acres of vineland; let them 
be well dried and sifted, and, on the evening before a frost is expected, 
strew lightly over the vines and the ground. The ashes thus sprinkled 
on the earth absorb the dampness, and also cover the new sprouts and pro- 
tect them from the action of the sun. This action has upon the young 
shoots already struck by the frost the same effect as fire upon members 
frozen by the cold. The vine-bad, or the young sprout, covered with” 
ashes, is not injured by the frost, or burned by the sun which strikes ite 
afterward, and it returns without suffering to its primitive state. The 
yoperation of sprinkling the ashes could be repeated early in the morn- 
ing, if the frost were persistent; and if the ashes should be washed 
away by the rain they should be renewed. During three years Pro 
employed this process to cover eighteen hundred meters of vines in the 
midst of the fields; they met with no damage, while, under the same 
circumstances, those of his neighbors were completely frozen.t+ 
The great object, says “B. M.,” in the recovery of plants from the 
effects of the frost, is to remove the frozen condition as gradually as 
possible, and to guard them against sudden exposure to heat, and from 
the direct influence of the sun. In plant-houses this can be effected by 
shading the roof, and by syringing the plant with very cold water, 
taking care, at the same time, that no more fire-heat is present than is 
sufficient to raise the temperature of the house a very few degrees above 
the freezing point. This last observation is very important. For out- 
door trees and plants, when frozen, shading is perhaps the best method 
within our power to adopt, at the same time causing the thaw to take 
place as gradually as possible. When they are covered with snow their 
condition is most favorable; but with tender plants it would be well to 
cover the snow upon them with straw, or mats, so that the sun may not 
act directly upon it, and the thawing process may be thereby rendered 
more gradual. 
Much diversity of opinion exists among practical men as to the 
advantage of protecting, by straw or other covering, tender trees and 
* Journal of the Horticultural Society, 1855, pp. 205-207. 
+ Journal de la Société d’ Horticulture de Paris, 1860, vol. vi, pp. 265-266. 
