114 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



willow, with its unwelcome roots and 

 shade, was too near. 



A word here with respect to the 

 policy of sending out trees for trial. 

 My personal experience is that when 

 the recipient tastes the delicate fruits, 

 and contemplates the beauty of the 

 flowers, he feels the cords of affiliation 

 drawing strongly, may I not add, ten- 

 derly. At all events, they address him 

 in the name of the Association in the 

 most eloquent language of progress and 

 refinement. Nevertheless, the sugges- 

 tion of H. M. Switzer, Esq. , of Palermo, 

 is worthy of consideration ; perhaps both 

 enterprises are possible. But of this, 

 in its proper time and place. 



You may expect me to say something 

 of the hardiness of varieties. Hardiness 

 is largely a matter of the condition of 

 the tree at the time of trial. 



AN EXPERIMENT. 



Six years ago I selected a young 

 native plum, about six feet high, vigor- 

 ous, and standing on a clay bank, facing 

 south-east. Sometime after it had com- 

 pleted its season's growth, the last of 

 August, I mulched it heavily, kept it 

 moist, and succeeded in starting new 

 growth, I kept it at that till frost. 

 Well, the winter killed that hardiest of 

 trees, and killed nothing else that I 

 had, not the tenderest. 



AN OBSERVATION. 



In 1884, just as the leaves of trees 

 were about one-third grown, there came, 

 at the last of May, a severe frost, accom- 

 panied by a wintry wind from the 

 north-west for two days. Within a 

 week I observed the leaves on the 

 Black Ash all withering on high and 

 low land alike. The trees never rallied. 

 Our Black Ash are all killed, yet the 

 Black Ash is a hardy tree. Why then 

 was it killed 1 Because it was in just 

 that condition which made it as suscep- 

 tible to frost as a tropical plant. Some 

 other foresters suffered slightly, and 



some fruit trees considerably, at the 

 same time. 



This locality is not one to test the 

 property of hardiness. Although in- 

 land, north-west of Lake Ontario about 

 a dozen miles, and about eighteen north 

 of Hamilton city, yet nearly everything 

 that thrives there can be grown fairly 

 well here. I have peach trees seedlings 

 thirty-two years old. The arctic winter 

 of 1884 and 1885 thinned them out. 

 Some survived and bore here and there 

 a peach, in spite of the 64° of frost they 

 had endured. This unusual hardiness 

 is due to position and soil. The coun- 

 try lies high and rolling, occasionally 

 rolling up into the picturesque. Nature, 

 when she made our mountain, decided 

 that it should be unique. To prevent 

 the building of any more just such 

 mountains, after laying down the strata 

 of shale, gray band and limestone, com- 

 posted the surplus debris, detritus and 

 lithic chips, fragments of slate and 

 granite, and a large percentage of clay, 

 underdraining, and occasionally top 

 coursing, with sand and gravel. Then 

 gashed and scored her work every- 

 where with gully and gorge of all 

 imaginable depths, through which flow 

 numerous streamlets limpid and trouty. 

 Thus she has supplied herself with a 

 comprehensive laboratory, filter, cruci- 

 ble and alembic, all in one. She is 

 prepared to welcome almost every kind 

 of tree and plant, and give each his 

 proper food "in due season." What 

 with steady and not fitful growth, per- 

 fect drainage, and well ripened wood, 

 our trees attain the utmost healthiness 

 and hardiness possible to the genus, 

 species or variety. I have never seen 

 a case of mildew on the grape. No 

 pear blight that went further than to 

 discolor the leaves. I have never lost 

 a branch, so doubt it being true pear 

 blight. The Black Knot never attacked 

 our plum and cherry till it had ravaged 

 the sand and calcareous soils adjacent. 



