332 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
We have already seen (page 322) that at Ithaca, 
New York, apricots, peaches and other fruits were 
able to endure a temperature of 18°, even when 
the buds were well swollen. In respect to the 
variations in the effects of winter temperatures, 
MecCluer** writes from the Dlinois Experiment Sta- 
tion as follows : 
“Here, we ordinarily think of 14° or 15° below 
zero as fatal to the peach erop, and as we often 
have a lower temperature than that but few peaches 
are planted. During the winter of 1894-5 the ther- 
mometer several times ranged below 20, and once 
sank to 25 below zero, and yet only half the peach 
lauds were killed, and the trees produced a_ good 
crop the season following. Last winter, with a 
minimum temperature of only 5° below zero, fully 
one-third of the peach buds were killed. I do not 
know just what conditions made the buds more 
hardy one season than another; neither do I know 
why part of the buds on a _ tree should be more 
hardy than the rest. Even in the axil of the same 
leaf one bud may be killed and the other live. 
“Other organic substances show the same differ- 
ences. In a half-bushel basket of potatoes exposed 
to the cold in a cellar, I have often found frozen 
tubers seattered through the basket and the rest not 
frozen. In the blossom-buds of the cherry and plum 
one or more may often be found killed, while the 
rest. have escaped. 
* GW. MeCluer, Garden and Forest, ix. 209 (May 20, 1896). 
