44 The Principles of Fruit-growing 



of light lands which are now being developed for pur- 

 poses of potato-culture; but while these lands are giving 

 fair yields of potatoes of good quality, they are in many 

 places suffering great injury from the destructive effects 

 of winds. On these lands, wherever broad, open fields lie 

 unprotected by windbreaks of any sort, the clearing west 

 and northwest winds after storms often sweep entirely 

 away crops of grain after they are 4 inches high, uncovering 

 the roots by the removal of from 1 to 3 inches of the surface 

 soil. It has been observed, however, that such slight bar- 

 riers as fences and even fields of grass afford a marked 

 protection against drifting for several hundred feet to the 

 leeward of them." 



Low temperature, however, is the greatest danger in the 

 weather environment. The reader must clearly distinguish 

 between frosts and freezes. Frosts occur on still, clear 

 nights, and are more or less local; freezes are usually accom- 

 paniments of storms, often of high winds, and are general 

 or even continental in range, and their courses are not 

 marked by the whiteness of frost. They were freezes, and 

 not frosts, that swept over Florida in the winter of 1894^5, 

 and over the northeastern states in May, 1895, and which 

 have made much havoc in recent years on the Pacific 

 coast and other regions; and most of the serious disasters 

 of untimely cold are of this kind. These freezes are mostly 

 beyond the reach of man. Particular men may protect 

 themselves by means of fires, but in the main the grower 

 can only move beyond their limits. But injurious frosts 

 may not only be avoided, in many cases, by the choice 

 of the location or even of the site, but they may sometimes 

 be prevented on the verj- night when they are expected. 

 (For ways and means, consult Chap. VII.) Of course, we 

 eliminate from this discussion all consideration of regions 



