AIR DRAINAGE AS AFFECTING ACCLIMATIZATION. 31 



country of northern New York, that when a peach orchard is planted 

 on a slope of a hill where there is active air drainage, the crop is much 

 more reliable. Then there is another thing in connection with this that 

 if, in this cold north country of ours, the peach orchard is planted on 

 the northern slope of a hill, it is vastly more reliable than when planted 

 on the southern slope of a hill, if it has active air drainage. Of course, 

 there is another problem involved in this, and all these problems are very 

 complex, gentlemen. We must not draw our conclusions from insufficient 

 data, because Nature's problems are so complex. The northern slope is 

 preferable to the southern, because there is greater uniformity of tem- 

 perature during the late winter and early spring, and with the southern 

 exposure, the direct rays of the sun to the square foot are very great, 

 and you have the soil thawing out when the temperature rises, whereas 

 on the same hill, an eighth of a mile away on the northern slope, there 

 is no change perceptible whatever. There is no slope and the sun's rays 

 impinging on the square foot are not more than one-quarter, and indeed, 

 hardly as much. Of course, if the hill is steep enough, there is no 

 impinging of the rays at all, and the only heat you get is the diffused 

 heat of the atmosphere. Now, in regard to this air drainage, there are 

 great results from it. The greatest fruit country in the United States, 

 and probably in North America, with the exception of the citrus counties 

 in Florida, is Ulster County, just north of us. Peaches were not grown 

 there thirty or forty years ago because they were utterly unreliable. 

 They were planted in sheltered valleys where the northerly winds would 

 not strike them. They supposed that the home of the peach was in 

 Persia in a warm climate, and so they thought the peach trees should be 

 planted in a warm valley. The fruit culturists in Ulster County were 

 advised to plant their peach orchards on the northern slopes. The result 

 was that the finest peaches in the city market to-day are the peaches grown 

 in that county. If you go down to the great Washington Market of this 

 city where the fruit is received, and you see any specially fine fruit to-day, 

 and ask where it comes from, the chances are it is Ulster County, but it 

 may be Northern New York, but it is grown on the hillside where there 

 is the most complete air drainage, and on the northern slope, because 

 the fluctuations of temperature are much less there than on the southern 

 slope. 



You know the native hemlock is a northern tree. I have often 

 said that it is the most beautiful evergreen on this earth. I have never 

 seen anything to qualify me in that statement, that the hemlock is the 

 most beautiful evergreen to be found. It is a northern tree. It is said 

 that the most southern hemlock grove is the one which is growing in 

 Bronx Park, but you know the hemlock is found far south on the 

 Carolinas perhaps in Georgia as well. I don't know as to that. It may 

 be in Georgia around on the mountain ranges. I happened to be in- 

 terested in an extensive tract of land in Virginia, including a considerable 

 portion, some forty or fifty thousand acres, on the Shenandoah Mountain. 



