206 MASSx^CHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



hardiness and the amount of protection given them. The 

 theory of the chairman of your committee, of the time tliat 

 grape vines were injured, is that it was after tlie middle of Feh- 

 ruary, 1861. The month (February) was quite mild for the 

 season of the year ; the snow, except in the woods or near walls 

 where it had drifted, had all gone, and the frost was entirely 

 out of the ground in many places. At that time I trimmed 

 sixteen Concord grape vines, having forgotten to trim them in 

 November, (which is a better time for that purpose,) leaving 

 the canes from four to six feet long, which was nearly all new 

 wood. I took the strongest of the new wood, trimmed off for 

 cuttings, covered them with earth, and planted them in the 

 spring. The most of them grew and are doing well. I found 

 in the spring that the canes I left for bearing on the vines trim- 

 med, were killed down to the top of the snow bank which had 

 lodged about the wall near which the vines were planted, show- 

 ing by the growth of the cuttings that the wood was killed after 

 the vines were trimmed. 



Immediately after the time of trimming in February, or about 

 the first of March, we had one of the most remarkable changes 

 in the weather that I now remember. The thermometer at two 

 o'clock, P. M., (Sunday,) being up to eighty degrees above, 

 and the next day following, to ten or fifteen degrees below zero 

 — a change in a little more than twenty-four hours of nearly 

 one hundred degrees in the temperature of the atmosphere. 

 Was it not this sudden and remarkable change, from very warm 

 and open weather for winter, by which the sap in the vines 

 might be excited to some extent, followed by sudden and severe 

 cold, the cause of the damage ? They must have been injured 

 by this sudden change of the weather or by some change after- 

 wards, for up to this time they were alive, or the cuttings taken 

 from the vines w^ould not have grown. 



But with a little trouble and care we can be perfectly inde- 

 pendent of the weather in the winter, simply by laying the vines 

 down on the ground, (where, if in vineyard culture, they should 

 be pruned down to keep them from being threshed around by 

 the wind,) which would be enough protection for any hardy 

 grape like the Concord, which I have known and watched since 

 it was first fruited, and it is the first time I have seen any of the 

 wood of this variety killed by the winter. But alight covering 



