52 SOIL, MANURES, SITUATION, AND ENCLOSURES. 



warmth of low places, during the mild weather, occurring in 

 winter, often swells fruit-buds, and succeeding cold destroys 

 them. On more elevated lands, vegetation escapes all these 

 disastrous influences. 



The existence of colder air in valleys, on still, clear nights, 

 is often plainly observed in riding over a rolling or broken 

 face of country. The thermometer has shown a difference of 

 several degrees between a creek bottom and a neighboring 

 hill not fifty feet high. A striking proof was exhibited a few 

 years since after a severe night-frost early in summer. The 

 young and succulent leaves of the hickory were but partially 

 expanded ; and where the trees stood in a valley, twenty feet 

 deep, all the leaves had been frosted, and were black and 

 dead, up to the level of the banks on each side, while all 

 above the surface of this lake of cold air were fresh and 

 green. 



During the cold of a clear winter night some years ago, 

 which sank the thermometer several degrees below zero, after 

 the peach buds had been swollen by a few warm days, trees 

 which stood on a hill thirty feet higher than the neighboring 

 creek valley lost nine-tenths of their blossoms ; while on an- 

 other 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 is rarely attempted in the 

 southern tier of counties in the State of New York. Proofs 

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

 ful on selected ground. A number of instances have been ob- 

 served where peach orchards, planted on the dry lands of the 

 hills in different parts of this region, have flourished and bore 

 regularly ; at the same time that orchards in the warm valleys 

 below rarely yielded crops, and the trees themselves were 

 sometimes destroyed. 



These cases show the importance of elevated sites. A dry, 

 firm soil is, however, of great consequence. The influence 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 heat more freely, the crop has been 

 destroyed. Cultivators of drained swamps have found it nee- 



