FRUIT committee's REPORT. 25 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON ERUITS, 



For the Year 1862. 

 BY J. S. CABOT, CHAIRMAN". 



At the close of another year the Standing Committee on Fruits, of the 

 Massachusetts Horticultural Society, present a Report of their doings for that 

 which has just ended, prefacing, as has been usual, the statement of their 

 award of Premiums with such an expression of opinions as may be the result 

 of further observations and experience in this branch of Horticulture, and its 

 increased development, and with remarks of a more general character bearing 

 upon the subject and therefore pertinent to the occasion. The year that has 

 now ended may be considered, taking it in all its aspects, as the most propi- 

 tious to growers of fruit of any that has occurred within the memory of any 

 now actively occupied in that pursuit. A summer not characterized by days 

 of extreme heat, or long continued droughts, but for a long continuance of 

 warm, genial weather, accompanied with abundant rains, giving to the fields 

 and hill sides, often at this season burnt with heat or browned by droughts, the 

 vivid green of early spring, and producing in vegetation a constant state of 

 growth and activity, was preceded by a favorable spring, a winter free from 

 any days of excessive cold or violent winds, and an autumn warm and dry, 

 thus adapted, by gradually checking the growth and ripening the wood of fruit 

 bearing trees, for best fitting them to pass unharmed the inclement season of 

 winter, always trying under its most f.ivorable aspects, so as to be at the open- 

 ing year in a condition to produce the remarkable crop that has been witnessed 

 as its result. 



The more marked meteorological phenomena of a year so remarkable for its 

 fruit crops should be perhaps briefly, but more particularly stated. The fruit 

 crop of a succeeding season depends much upon the condition of the trees at 

 its commencement, and this condition is sensibly affected, either favorably or 

 unfavorably, by their state at the close of the preceding year, for upon this 

 very much depends their ability to resist the evil influence of the severe cold 

 of winter. A Avarm autumn, accompanied with much rain, tends to produce a 

 late growth of wood up to the time of the occurrence of severe frosts, when 

 it can hardly fail that this late growth of immature wood is subjected to severe 

 injury from extreme cold, and the sap being in a state of full activity the 

 whole tree will most probably be st?riou3ly harmed. Hence, the reason for 

 stating, as is believed to be the fact, that the character of the closing months 

 of the year has a strong influence on the fruit crop of the succeeding. Now 

 the autumn months of 1861 were warm, without unnatural heat, and very 

 dry, as favorable a combination for fruit trees as could perhaps be desired, and 

 the transition from the warm to the cold season was gradual and not sudden* 



