118 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
vision for joint action—and quotes a letter from 
their treasurer, in which it is stated that the cost 
of guaranteeing two million vines for a year was 
one and a quarter francs (twenty-five cents) per 
thousand vines. He gives a letter from another 
syndicate of sixty proprietors at Saussac, in the 
Médoc, describing a successful attempt to keep the 
frost from their vines on April 27, 1888. The wires 
attaching the vines were coated with ice. It was 
decided to light the smudges at two o’clock in 
the morning, when one hundred and thirty were 
lighted, placed at a distance apart of twelve meters 
(a little under forty feet), thus extending along a 
line one thousand five hundred and fifty meters (not 
quite a mile) long. The report states that not only 
the vineyards, but everything that frost ordinarily 
destroys, fields of clover, potatoes, peas, everything, 
in fact, covered by the cloud, from the line of 
smudges extending back to a depth of three thou- 
sand meters (say two and three-fourth miles), cover- 
ing a surface of five hundred and fifty hectares (one 
thousand three hundred and seventy-five acres), was 
saved, while the fields not covered by the cloud suf- 
fered from the effects of the frost on that same day. 
The one hundred and thirty smudges were only two- 
thirds burnt, and the cost was estimated at thirteen 
centimes (less than three cents) a hectare (two and 
one-half acres). Some of Lestout’s correspondents 
express the hope that a law will be passed pro- 
viding that when two-thirds of the proprietors of 
a district elect to form a syndicate, they will be 
