44 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
states, also, the plant goes into the winter in a 
perfectly dormant and ripened condition, and is 
thereby able to withstand great cold. It has been 
said that injury from cold is more frequent in 
the Gulf states than in New York. 
The elevation of any place also stands in close 
relation to the frostiness of it. Perfectly flat lands 
are nearly always frosty, because there is no atmos- 
pherie drainage, a subject to which we shall soon 
recur. On the other hand, very high lands are also 
frosty, because the air is drier and rarer, and there- 
fore allows of rapid radiation of heat from the 
land; and they are exposed to cold, unbroken winds. 
The local altitude to which the fruit lands may be 
carried can be determined only by actual experiment; 
but in the north the best clevations for the ten- 
der fruits are usually hetween 100 and 300 feet 
above the local rivers or lakes. 
Whilst it is extremely important that the loca- 
tion for the growing of tender or early-blooming 
fruit should be selected with reference to its im- 
munity from disastrous winter temperatures and un- 
timely frosts, it should also be said that climate is 
often held responsible for failures which are charge- 
able to ignorance or neglect. This is particularly 
well illustrated in the perishing peach-growing of 
some parts of the north. It is a common complaint 
that peaches cannot be grown so easily as formerly. 
The writer has investigated this matter upon the 
eastern shore of Cayuga Lake, in central New York,* 
* Bull. 74, Cornell Exp. Sta, 
