48 HATCH EXPERIMENT STATION. [Jan. 



Perhaps the fact most obviously developed by the ^^ear's 

 experience is that the trees were more severely injured by 

 the freezes of 1902-03 and 1903-04 than had been supposed. 

 From week to week one tree after another broke down or 

 split down or lost large branches, through the stress of winds 

 or growing fruit crop. As each successive tree broke down, 

 it was plainly to be seen that the wood had been seriously 

 injured by freezing, and that it had not recovered. Though 

 the tree kept on growing, adding fresh and healthy outer 

 layers of wood, the interior was dead and decaying. In 

 many cases this decay was serious, and had extended through 

 considerable areas of tissue. Many fungi (mostly sapro- 

 phytes such as feed on dead wood) had gained a foothold, 

 and seemed to l)e out-thriving the peach trees. 



These evidences of decay, especially the larger fungi 

 (polypori, etc.), were most conspicuous on the "dehorned" 

 trees. A few of these trees have finally succumbed during 

 the suiumcr of 1905, and it is now plainer than it was a year 

 ago that this method of treating severely frozen peach trees 

 is not to be recommended. An additional drawback lay in 

 the fact that the trees bore little or no fruit in 1905, while 

 all the other trees in the experiment bore a good crop. 



Perhaps a word of explanation should be added to this 

 statement of the case. This method of pruning peach trees 

 back to mere stubs has its uses, as in renewing the head 

 when a tree is to be rebudded to a new variety. It can be 

 successfully carried out, but only on vigorous and compara- 

 tively young trees. Trees weakened by freezing are pre- 

 cisely the ones which cannot respond to such vigorous 

 treatment. 



Coming next to the trees severely headed back (from which 

 })ractically all the one-year-old wood was removed in the 

 spring of 1905), we find conditions much better. There 

 are some manifest evidences of the injury received during 

 the freezes of two and three winters a<>o, some broken limbs 

 and some grow^th of saprophj^tic fungi ; but the trees show 

 strong, sturdy tops, with a very satisftictory animal growth 

 for 1905. Tli(! trees bore a good crop of fruit in 1905, and 

 are in the best condition of any in the orchard for carrying 



