46 Soil, Manures, Situation, and Enclosures. 



water. Even old bearing trees have been much improved by laying 

 tile two and a half or three feet below the surface, midway between 

 the rows (Fig. 54). The young forming-roots being the most remote 

 from the tree, receive the greatest benefit from drains thus placed, 

 and the tile is less liable to be thrown out of position by large roots 

 or filled by smaller ones. 



SITUATION. 



After a suitable soil is obtained, hardy trees, such as the apple, 

 will usually succeed in almost any situation. But with tender fruits, 

 as the peach and apricot, the case is very different. In many locali- 

 ties in the Northern States, they are soon destroyed by the severity 

 of winters, and their cultivation is accordingly not attempted. In 

 others, crops are not yielded oftener than once in two years. But 

 some situations are so favorable, that a failure scarcely ever occurs. 

 In planting out tender fruits, it is consequently desirable to know 

 what places will prove the best. Even the apple, in regions where 

 the winters are rigorous, is sometimes destroyed by frost, and in 

 very unfavorable places rarely escapes. 



It is familiar to many cultivators, that warm, low valleys are more 

 subject to night-frosts than more elevated localities. Objects at the 

 surface of the earth are chilled by the radiation of heat to the cold 

 and clear sky above, and they cool by contact the surrounding air, 

 which thus becoming heavier, rolls down the sides of declivities and 

 settles like the waters of a lake, in the lowest troughs. This cold- 

 ness is further increased by the stillness of those sheltered places 

 favoring the more rapid cooling, by radiation of the exposed sur- 

 faces ; while on hills the equilibrium is partially restored by currents 

 of wind. Superadded to these causes, vegetation in low, rich, and 

 sheltered places is more luxuriant, and wood less ripened, and hence 

 particularly liable to injury from frost. The mucky soil of valleys 

 radiates heat rapidly from its surface. The warmth of low places, 

 during the mild weather, occurring in winter, often swells fruit-buds, 

 and succeeding cold destroys them. On more elevated lands, vege- 

 tation escapes all these disastrous influences. 



The existence of colder air in valleys, on still, clear nights, is often 

 plainly observed in riding over a rolling or broken face of country. 

 The thermometer has shown a difference of several degrees between 

 a creek bottom and a neighboring hill not fifty feet high. A striking 

 proof was exhibited a few years since, after a severe night-frost early 

 in summer. The young and succulent leaves of the hickory were 



