NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 213 



blossomed profusely, and it looked as if he had made a suc- 

 cess of it. He thought he had his pocket full of money. 

 (Sometimes even after you ship a crop of fruit the commis- 

 sion house get the money.) Well, in the case of my neigh- 

 bor, instead of reaping a large reward, the crop was a failure. 

 He did not pick more than three crates of strawberries. An 

 unseasonable frost cut down his plants. There is where we 

 have so much difficulty in planting fruit on these warm ex- 

 posures. They blossom so early and an unseasonable frost 

 comes along and nips them, and that is the end of our pros- 

 pects for a crop. That is a trouble that is very apt to over- 

 take us, and it raises the point that in the selection of a place 

 for the planting of fruit due regard must be given to the 

 exposure. 



Out in the west, in California and Colorado, they have 

 been making very extensive progress by means of artificial 

 heaters to keep the temperatures up in certain localities. You 

 have all heard, perhaps, the story of a contemplated visit of 

 Jack Frost in the Grand Valley, where a band of farmers in 

 that valley, some three thousand, clubbed together and pre- 

 pared smudges. Upon a night when they expected the 

 thermometer to drop below the danger point they had all of 

 their arrangements made and simply went to work and set 

 these smudges going. They succeeded in raising the tem- 

 perature there over an area of some twenty-seven square 

 miles eight degrees. They were able by that means to keep 

 it up above thirty. In California they have tried this. Of 

 course, in any single locality one man alone by his own efforts 

 could not get up a sufficient heat to change the temperature 

 in his own orchard. It would be a considerable task. That 

 would be especially true in a very large orchard. This 

 method has not been used, so far as I know, to prevent frosts 

 on small fruits, but I see no reason why we could not use it. 

 By means of that expedient, they saved three millions of dol- 

 lars to the state of Colorado last year. Until we are sure 

 that we can use this method in our small fruits, we better get 



