NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



43 



particular in giving credit to those from whom it 

 quotes. We mention these instances not as a mat- 

 ter of particular consequence, but to show how 

 injustice may be done to some and unmerited 

 credit given to others, by not making the proper 

 acknowledgments in the first place. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 WHAT KILLS THE BUDS AND TREES. 



Messrs. Editors: — In one of your late numbers 

 are some remarks under the same caption as this 

 of my present communication. A very important 

 question. In your remarks upon the same subject 

 headed "Effects of the late severe winter upon veg- 

 etation," you conclude by expressing the hope 

 that correspondents who have carefully observed 

 these phenomena, will favor us with the conclu- 

 sions at which they have arrived. And your as- 

 sociate, Mr. French, hopes that readers of the New 

 England Farmer will afford opportunity of com- 

 paring notes on this matter. 



I am not one of "those who have carefully ob- 

 served these phenomena," and have no notes to 

 compare, and I am sensible that, in expressing an 

 opinion on the subject, I lay myself open to ani- 

 madversion for speaking without knowledge. 



Your correspondent, W. H. II., from Plaistow, 

 intimates his disbelief in the common notion that 

 the expansion caused by the frost is the sole injury 

 done by severe cold. If it could be established 

 that severe cold was the cause of the death of 

 the plant, exclusive of other influence, I should 

 agree with him. Perhaps there are plants that 

 arc killed by cold alone. But when a plant is killed 

 or suffers an injury less than death by frost only, 

 I should doubt, as he does, that the injury is ef- 

 fected by the expansion of the sap vessels. Freez- 

 ing, it is true, causes expansion of water, but not 

 of dry wood. And in the severe cold which is 

 supposed to kill the tree, there is no sap in the 

 vessels. I think the most scrutinizing observation 

 will not detect any expansion of the tree in the 

 coldest weather. If mere cold alone is capable of 

 destroying the life of a plant, I should think it 

 done not by expansion of the sap or of the wood ; 

 but that the decay of the spiral vessels, which are 

 those conducting the sap, ensued from the total 

 abstraction of heat, which is the vital element of 

 plants, no less than of animals and of man. When 

 the latent caloric, or natural vital heat of a plant 

 is wholly expended and gone, the spiral vessels 

 would lose their power, would cease to perform 

 their assigned function in the vegetable economy, 

 the sap could no longer circulate, and, with the 

 stopping of the circulation, the plant dies. Such 

 would be my view of the operation of cold upon 

 plants, in cases where it is capable of producing 

 death . 



But I cannot think that the cold of last winter 

 was capable of doing this, or of producing death in 

 any other way, be it expansion, or by any other 

 imaginable process; — and this for the reason, 

 among others, that there has been a greater de- 

 gree of cold in some winters, in this vicinity, than 

 any cold of last winter. It is doubtful if any one 

 among us has known a winter without as great a 

 degree of cold as any of the past winter, though 

 the number of days with the thermometer below 

 zero may have been more than usual. If I am 



not mistaken, there have been winters with as in- 

 tense cold, and even from five to ten degrees less, 

 without producing the same injury to trees. In 

 your remarks upon this subject you remind us of 

 the rigors of the higher latitudes, which produce 

 not such results. These facts furnish a strong argu- 

 ment against the idea that cold alone, or at any 

 rate, that the cold of last winter, was the unas- 

 sisted cause of the injury. 



In one of your late numbers, in a communicap 

 tion headed "Effect of cold on plants,'* to be found 

 in your May monthly, it is stated that heat sud- 

 denly succeeding intense cold is a cause of the 

 death of the plant, by producing inflammation, as 

 is the case with a man who, after having his limbs 

 frozen, is brought at once to a hot tire. This 

 causes excessive pain, and sometimes death or 

 less injury. But whether a man is frozen to 

 death, or dies in consequence of too sudden ap- 

 plication of great heat following the freezing, he 

 does not, in either case, I believe, die of expansion. 

 In both cases the vessels necessary to keep up the 

 vital functions, lose the power to perform their 

 office; in the one- 1 ' case by paralysis or loss of 

 vital energy, because of loss of vital heat; in the 

 other, by inflammation and consequent mortifi- 

 cation, or exhaustion. Such, in the one case, 

 and in the other, I take to be the operation of 

 the same causes in the vegetable department of 

 nature. In the plant as in the animal, life is at 

 first communicated by heat, and while it continues, 

 heat constitutes the vital energy, and, by the ac- 

 tivity of the vegetable functions, heat is constant- 

 ly generated, and, by mutual and reciprocal ac- 

 tion, it keeps up that activity, and is necessary to 

 it, and when wholly lost to the plant, life is gone 

 with it. 



Such, sir, is my view of the effect of heat and 

 cold upon plants. Perhaps, as you have already 

 devoted several columns to this subject, you may 

 think these remarks, being unaccompanied by any 

 statistics derived from experiment or observation, 

 wjll not be profitable to your readers. If so, you 

 will know what to do with them. The view is, 

 however, I think, sustained by the analogies of 

 nature in the animal department. It has been 

 proved that the process of respiration in plants is 

 accompanied by a disengagement of heat — and 

 that it is developed in them in the same way as in 

 animals. "It is evident," says Dr. Smith, "that 

 a certain appropriate portion of heat is a necessa- 

 ry stimulus to the constitution of every plant, 

 without which its living principles is destroyed." 

 The young and tender wood of later growth is 

 sooner destroyed than the older wood of trees, not 

 because it expands more readily, or to a greater 

 degree, but because its tissues being more delicate 

 and tender, are more easily killed either by cold or 

 by sudden supervening heat, as above described, 

 than the tissues of the older wood. w. J. a. c. 



Essex, Aug., 1852. 



A Rare Chance. — If any of our friends are de- 

 sirous of sending their boys to an excellent teacher 

 in a pleasant country town near Boston, we can 

 refer them to such, where the operations of the 

 farm and of the animal and vegetable kingdoms 

 are constantly showed in connection with the 

 usual routine of book studies. 



