FRUIT committee's REPORT. 6^1 



autumn one almost uninterrupted succession of cJear bright days, with bnt 

 few of extreme heat, yet of sufficient warmth to ripen crops and fruit ; and 

 though dry, yet with showers and rains so seasonable and well-timed that only 

 in a few cases was much injury caused by drought. There was no frost suffi- 

 cient to kill tender plants until the 25th of Octobpr, and the ground remained 

 unfrozen, and in a condition favorable to out-of-door operation, down to a 

 much later period. 



But favorable as was the summer and autumn, there has not been for a long 

 period a season so unpropitious to the cultivators of fruit as the past, the crops 

 of some of the more important varieties having proved almost total failures, — 

 its results, as it respects the different varieties, will be referred to hereafter 

 under the head of the several sorts. And it is not only in the loss of a crop 

 that fruit-growers have suffered, but also in the injury, often severe, that has 

 been done to their trees. In many cases this injury has been confined to the 

 killing of the later growth — the more tender shoots at the ends of limbs, io 

 others to the destruction of flower or leaf buds, while in still others it has 

 extended to the whole tree, causing its death, or rendering it worthless or of 

 little value. This injury was much more severe and complete in some varie- 

 ties than in others, showing a difference of vigor and degrees of hardiho€)d in 

 different sorts of the same kind, — a difference not sufficiently attended to 

 when profit is the object of the cultivator ; as, for example, in pears, the Bart- 

 lett and Beurre Bosc suffered greatly, the trees of botli having been almost 

 universally severally injured, and in many instances wholly killed ; while, on 

 the contrary, the Marie Louise, Belle Lucrative, the Urbaniste and Louise 

 Bonne de Jersey, seemed to escape wholly unharmed ; the two first of these 

 last-named having been, the past season, superior in quantity and quality to 

 any season now remembered. What was the cause of this wide-spread 

 destruction ? To this question perhaps no perfectly satisfactory and conclu- 

 sive answer can be returned, and it may seem hardly worth while to pursue 

 the inquiry; but yet to do so, or at least to bestow some consideration upon 

 the subject, may not be wholly useless, and the expression at least of some 

 opinion concerning it, may, in a paper of the character of the present, be 

 expected. Jf the attention of fruit-growers should bo drawn to a considera- 

 tion of the matter, and, by collating of facts and comparing of opinions, some 

 definite conclusion, as it might be, should be reached, it might induce a mode 

 of cultivation that should measurably guard against a recurrence of the evil. 

 On a previous occasion, sicnilar to that of the present, the opinion was 

 expressed that shelter to some extent, to be obtained either in the selection of 

 a site or by artificial means, was an important element to success in the culti- 

 vation of some varieties of fruits, if not absolutely essential thereto ; and this 

 opinion has been strengthened and confirmed by observation the past season, 

 ■when injury has been almost universal, and exemption from it exception, it 

 has been noticed that gardens or orchards that were in some way sheltered 

 have almost wholly escaped injury. 



