STATE POMOl.OGICAL SOCIETY. 89 



ment I am indebted to Mr, S. R. Leland, tlie well-known pomologist 

 of Mt. Baldwin Farm, in Farmington. 



You may not find as many climatic changes in Franklin as in 

 Oxford, but you will find some quite as severe. When a man's 

 entire yearly product of fiuit, amounting to four or five hundred 

 dollars, is destroyed in a night from one October freeze, or thousands 

 of grafts from one to four years of age of several standard varieties 

 are killed back to the parent stock in one winter, he is strongly in- 

 clined to mark his position as the climatic line of fruit culture. But 

 it only goes to prove that he was unfortunate in the position of the 

 orchard and in the selection of the varieties Select the proper 

 varieties, engraft them on hard}', well-tested stock, plant the trees 

 in soil suited to their growth, shelter them with evergreen or other 

 forest trees, and I will venture to say that you have removed the 

 climatic line in the course of fifty years — so far, at least, as your 

 own position is concerned — one-half a degree farther north. We 

 know that lightning seldom strikes twice in the same place and the 

 records of the past will go to show that a freeze like that which 

 utterly- destroyed the fruit crop in Phillips and in adjacent towns five 

 years ago, or like the freeze which within a few months past de- 

 stroyed a large part of the orange crop in Florida and ruined many 

 young trees, will not occur again for forty or fift}' years. The 

 orchardists in Florida are full of hope and courage, and the same 

 persevering and indomitable spirit should pervade all our frontier 

 or pioneer fruit culturists. 



The climatic line of fiuit culture in Maine is all moonshine. That 

 staunch pioneer and venerable pomologist, Mr. Calvin Chamber- 

 lin of Foxcroft, has recently declared to me in a private letter that 

 the subject will do very well to talk about, but that it will be a good 

 deal like chasing the rainbow : it will be a great deal nearer to some 

 than to others. 



We all know that the thermal line of fruit culture varies greatly 

 in one's own town. In riding the short distance of two miles, from 

 my place to Hallowell, we cross a comparative!}' low valley where the 

 thermometer on a cold winter's day or on a warm July night is always 

 from five to ten degrees lower than what it is near the top of the hill, 

 some sixty to sevent}^ feet in elevation. 



Now I cannot remember, but Dr. Hoskins of Newport, Vermont, 

 will tell you just how many degrees difference there will be in the 

 thermometer for every fifty or one hundred feet difference in eleva- 



