64 



SITUATION. 



peach buds had been swelled by a few warm days, trees 

 which stood on a hill thirty feet higher than the neighbor- 

 ing creek valley, lost nine-tenths of their blossoms, while 

 on another hill sixty feet high, nine-tenths escaped. The 

 lake of cold air which covered the top of the smaller hill 

 did not reach the summit of the larger. 



The cultivation of the peach :"s rarely attempted in the 

 southern tier of counties in the state of New-York. Proofs 

 are not wanting, however, that it might be entirely suc- 

 cessful on selected ground. In the valley of the Conhoc- 

 ton, which is flanked by hills 500 feet high, peach trees 

 have been completely killed to the ground. But on one ot 

 the neighboring hills, 500 feet above, and probably 1,200 

 feet above the level of the sea, an orchard planted in good 

 soil, yields regular crops. In the town of Spencer, Tioga 

 county, near the head of Cayuga inlet, peaches have with- 

 stood the climate and done well, at an elevation of 700 

 feet above Cayuga lake. In the northeastern partof Penn- 

 sglvania, probably 1200 or 1500 feet above the level of the 

 ocean, in the summer of 1835, after one of the severest 

 winters for twenty years, the only two peach trees observed 

 in travelling many miles, were full of peaches ; while after 

 the same winter, a large tree in Stroudsbiirg valle)', was 

 noticed killed quite down to the ground. While those hills 

 are usually covered with snow throughout the winter, and 

 vegetation consequently remains uniformly dormant, the 

 valleys are subjected to occasional thaws, and are more un 

 favorable to tender vegetation. 



These cases show the importance of elevated sites. A 

 dry, firm soil, is however, of great consequence. The in 

 fiuence of a compact knoll, rising but slightly above the 

 rest of the field, has been observed to save from frost the 

 corn which grew upon it ; while on the more mucky or 

 spongy portions of the rest of the field, radiating heal more 

 freely, the crop has been destroyed. Cultivators of drained 

 swamps have found it necessary to plant such lands with 

 tender crops two or three weeks later than the usual period 

 on upland. The successful cultivation of the peach and the 

 grape, on the gently swelling hills called mounds, in the 

 in the western prairies, while the crops are destroyed on 

 the adjacent dark and porous soils of the plains, afTords ano- 



