No. 4.] FKUIT GROWING. 85 



old. I am a young man, and I do not know how nuich older 

 they may be ; but those are old native trees, and probably 

 the survivors of hundreds that have gone down. 



Question. In selecting the ground for a peach orchard, 

 would you take the highest elevation, even though the 

 ground was heavy soil, or would you take a more level 

 plain, with a lighter soil ? 



Mr. Hale. I should prefer the greater elevation, if of 

 the character to which I have referred. I know we have 

 some high hills that are nicely situated for the growing of 

 peaches, Ijut there are some where perhaps the soil is too 

 heavy and moist for the peach. But that is the only objec- 

 tion. Otherwise I should prefer the greater elevation. The 

 question is, whether or not there is a quick descent some- 

 where near the hill where you want to plant. A hill one 

 hundred and fifty feet high that has a quick descent near by 

 is preferable to a great level plain five or six hundred feet high. 



Question. How many times have your trees been injured 

 by spring frost? 



Mr. Hale. Only once. The danger in New England is 

 not from spring frost, or very rarely ; it is rather from 

 excessive freezing in the winter, when the thermometer gets 

 down to sixteen, eighteen or twenty degrees below zero, and 

 the ground is free from snow. People spring the question 

 on me sometimes, " How is it that peaches are not as relial:)le 

 in New England now as they were forty or fifty years ago ? " 

 I have studied that question a good deal ; I have inquired of 

 a great many people, and I judge from the answers given by 

 old residents of New England that forty or fifty years ago 

 they had an abundance of snow on the ground in the winter. 

 The roots of trees therefore were kept warm. They were 

 blanketed with two or three feet of snow, which we do not 

 have now, but the cold is no more excessive. The trees are 

 injured more now than formerly because the ground is bare 

 during the cold weather. We have had the mercury at 

 eighteen below zero in our orchard in one of the years when 

 we had a good crop. I cannot tell the year now, but it 

 went down eighteen degrees below zero in the least exposed 

 portion of our orchard, and yet we had a good crop of 

 peaches, and I believe it was because, at the time of the 



