PROTECTION FEOM FEOST. 255 



plied before sunrise, or the plants are sprinkled repeat- 

 edly with water until the frost is extracted, they generally 

 escape without serious injury. If a frosty night is followed 

 b}' a cloudy or foggy morning, injury to plants need not 

 be apprehended. 



Fruit trees and vines in blossom, or with young fruit 

 set, are in some large districts so liable to suffer from late 

 spring frost, that fruit bearing, in the case of those first 

 to bloom, is the exception. The crop is lost, perhaps, two 

 years out of three. It is seldom in the most frosty locali- 

 ties that they are endangered more than two or three 

 nights in a season, all the fruit of the peach being rarely 

 killed until it begins to enlarge, and the blossom is on 

 the wane. Such trees are too large to admit of being 

 covered. They ran, however, be fully protected by smoke. 

 Ordinary smoke in still, frosty nights, rises rapidly, and 

 to be of any service, it must settle over the trees in a 

 moderately dense cloud, acting as a screen and prevent- 

 ing radiation. A heavy, damp smoke, not rising rapidly, 

 in which the trees are kept fully enveloped until some 

 time after sunrise, is what is necessary to protect a fruit 

 garden. A slight frost will do fruit blossoms little injury, 

 and there are some which will bear a good many more 

 degrees of cold than others. When a severe frost is 

 pretty certain, billets of short, dry wood, fat light-wood, 

 and piles of wet tan, sawdust, or other damp trash, 

 should be distributed about two rods apart over the fruit 

 garden, and the most to the windward. The tan or trash 

 should be distributed during the winter. About three 

 o'clock in the morning is soon enough to start the fires, 

 each of which is made with three or four of the billets, 

 being kindled with the light wood. When well lighted, 

 put on and nearly smother it with the wet tan. If it 

 again break out into a blaze, apply more tan, and keep 

 up damp, smouldering fires, and a curtain of smoke over 



