No. 4.] FRUIT GROWING. 73 



knowledge that is circulated abroad in the plant and nursery 

 catalogues, it is hardly worth while to go into those things 

 here ; but when the time comes for questions on any par- 

 ticular point in the line that the gentleman who spoke to me 

 had in mind I will be glad to answer them. 



There is one thing that applies to fruit growing in Connec- 

 ticut, and it applies to Massachusetts equally well, and that 

 is this. The climatic conditions of New Ens-land are some- 

 what trying, especially to fruits, and it is well to study the 

 climatic conditions of our farms in relation to the different 

 fruits that we may plant. The more ordinary fruits we can 

 grow almost anywhere, the more tender ones want selected 

 places. It has been perfectly astonishing to me in my peach 

 orcharding to find what variations there were in the tem- 

 perature within very short distances. I know that some 

 years ago a member of my family who kept a record of 

 the temperature from day to day, and a friend living only 

 half a mile away who did the same thing, used to find upon 

 comparing notes that in extremely hot weather our place 

 was some two or three degrees colder, and in extremely cold 

 weather we were some two or three decrees warmer. That 

 was the difference in temperature between places only half a 

 mile apart. Of course the friends often exchanged ther- 

 mometers in order to prove that the variation was not due to 

 the thermometers, but was really due to climatic difterences. 

 We all know that frost will run down hill just about as quick 

 as water. We have one of those long, narrow farms, fronting 

 on the Connecticut River and runnino- three miles back. 

 Our ancestors bouo;ht as laro-e a frontas-e on the river as 

 they could, half a mile or three-quarters ; but as generation 

 after generation came along and wanted a farm, they split 

 the land through in the middle, and repeated the operation 

 until some of the farms have a width not greater than 

 twenty rods on the river, and yet a few still hold the full 

 three-mile length. Our farm o-oes from the lower levels 

 of the Connecticut River back to considerable elevations, 

 twenty-two rods wide and a mile long. I have been out 

 over the farm early in the morning a good many times 

 when looking after the peach buds, and when I would go 

 down hill I found that the thermometer sunk four or six 



