62 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



In answer to the question proposed, then, it may be said that different 

 observers and cultivators have attributed to different causes the destruction of 

 the fruit crop the past season, though such causes are all of the same general 

 character. Some have been disposed to assign as the primary cause of the 

 destruction of the fruit crop, the heavy frost of September, 1860; but this, it 

 is believed, is an opinion hardly sustained by facts. How is it, if this is so, 

 that grape vines, wholly exposed to this frost, but subsequently protected, bore 

 full crops the succeeding summer, showing no signs of injury ; and that in two 

 cases, — in one of a peach and the other of a cherry, — branches growing near 

 the ground, and covered with snow, blossomed at the appropriate time, as 

 usual, while all the rest of the trees show marks of severe injury. The effects 

 of this frost might have been to render fruit trees less able to resist other 

 adverse influences, and thus contributed to this result; but its agency, if any, 

 must, it is believed, be considered as remote and secondary, rather than imme- 

 diate. Others, — and, it is thought, with more reason, — have been disposed to 

 attribute the injury to the cold succeeding to the unseasonable heat of March 

 3d; but this seems hardly probable, for this heat was but of short continuance, 

 — indeed, in its greatest degree, of only a few hours' duration, — not suffi- 

 ciently long to excite the sap, and produce a condition in the tree that would 

 render it apt to receive injury from the cold. Besides, although so great a 

 degree of heat as 7.5'^, at this season, is rarely noted, yet very warm weather 

 for a succession of days, followed subsequently by cold, is not in early spring 

 of very rare occurrence, and yet seldom followed by such sad effects. If 

 neither of these causes is accepted, there only remains of meteorological 

 influences the great cold of February 8th, and to this it is thought all the 

 mischief may be attributed. Certain species of fruit trees, as the peach, &c., 

 are, it is generally supposed, incapable of resisting the influence of a certain 

 degree of cold ; in case of the peach 10° below has sometimes been arbitra- 

 rily assigned as this limit. It is doubtless a mistake to fix upon any degree as 

 a certain limit, for this must depend on the previous condition of the tree, and 

 state of its wood ; but that there is a degree of cold that such are incapable 

 of undergoing, without harm, can hardly be controverted. 



And what is true of the more tender species may be also equally so of the 

 more hardy, as the apple and pear; only, that these last are capable of resist- 

 ing the effects of a lower temperature, and escaping unbanned when the 

 former are seriously injured. It seems then not unreasonable to assign as a 

 cause for the injury to fruit trees and loss of their crop, the past season, — the 

 more tender suffering the most, — the severe cold of February 8, 18G1. It is 

 not unusual to hear of the loss of apple or other trees, at the West, in conse- 

 quence of severe cold, the mercury having fallen to 25° or 30° below ; and 

 some years since, in 1835, in New England, owing to the severity of the win- 

 ter, of great numbers of the Baldwin apple trees having been destroyed. If 

 such accounts are to be relied upon, they serve to prove that fruit trees are 

 unable to resist the effects of a certain temperature, whatever that may be, 



