256 GARDENING FOR THE SOUTH. 



the trees until the sun is well up and the frost fully ex- 

 tracted. If the fruit is frozen hard as bullets, have no 

 fears, but keep up a dense smoke. By this mode of apply- 

 ing smoke the peach crop can be saved every year. There 

 is no doubt about it. When a boy — thirty-five years ago — 

 we ate of pears thus saved by an uncle of ours, and have 

 ourselves since repeatedly practiced it and seen it tried 

 by others. Our Gardening was the first English work, 

 so far as we know, in which this mode of protection was 

 published, though French authors, we find, allude to the 

 process. Boussingault says it is as old as the Incas of 

 Peru. The peach crop has thus been preserved with the 

 mercury as low as 2± on the morning of March 27th, 

 and the blossoms mostly fallen. Without such protection 

 few good varieties of the peach are safe with the mer- 

 cury below 30°. The expense of the operation is but a 

 trifle, compared with the value of a fine crop of fruit in a 

 locality where all, not thus protected, is cut off. 



Winter protection is also necessary for the preservation 

 of many valuable plants, the limits within which they are 

 naturally found being much narrower than those within 

 which they can bo grown in perfection with a little pro- 

 tection. Besides ordinary bedding plants which are 

 stored during the winter in pits or other structures, and 

 again occupy the beds and borders when danger of frost 

 is over, there is a large class of plants, that, with a slight 

 protection where they stand, will pass the winter safely, 

 and throw up much more vigorous shoots than if taken 

 up and replanted. A friend of ours succeeds perfectly 

 with the fig in Pennsylvania by bending down the limbs 

 yearly and covering them with earth; while in Georgia, 

 with no protection, they are occasionally killed to the 

 ground. 



Ordinary herbaceous plants need no protection unless 

 they have been divided or transplanted in autumn. Those 



