32 SOIL AND ASPECT. 



been secured, all other questions concerning the soil are, compara- 

 tively, of little moment. Soils that will produce good crops of 

 grain will be found weU adapted to fruit. The soUs best suited 

 to the several fruits will be mentioned when we come to treat of 

 the different fruits separately, but for most of the fruits of our 

 climate, strong calcareous loams, that is, loams in which there is 

 just enough sand to make them easily worked, and which are 

 abundantly supplied with limestone, are the best suited to the 

 raising of fruit. 



Deep vaUeys, with only small streams of water, are bad 

 situations for fruit trees, for the reason that, in calm nights, the 

 cold air settles down in these valleys, frequently killiug buds and 

 blossoms, while on the adjacent hiQ-tops they entirely escape. 

 Usually hill-sides, sloping to the west, are the best for fruit trees, 

 protecting them from the rays of a bright sun after a clear frosty 

 night. The borders of large rivers and lakes are favorable 

 situations, large bodies of water having an ameliorating effect 

 upon the temperature. Sometimes a slight mist rising from the 

 water in the morning, after a frosty night, so softens the rays of 

 the sun that the frost is drawn out very gradually, and the 

 injurious effect of sudden thawing prevented. An aspect that is 

 sheltered from the sweep of the prevailing winds by a belt of 

 woodland, and particularly of evergreens, enjoys an immunity 

 from extremes of cold which often prove injurious to more exposed 

 orchards. As our forests fall before the axe, and the country is 

 laid bare to the frost-laden winds of our Canadian winters, and 

 the climate thereby becomes more harsh, the most successful fruit 

 growers will be those who have sheltered their orchards by 

 planting belts of evergreens, and, as strongly advised by Mr. 

 Elliott, occasional evergreen trees, or clumps of them, scattered 

 with judgment here and there through the orchard, and always 

 80 disposed as that their ameliorating effect shall be most bene- 

 ficially felt by the adjacent fruit trees. Much might be writtei- 

 on the value of such belts and clximps of trees to every farmer ; 

 on the great benefits accruing, not only to the orchard, but to the 



