LVII 
ORCHARDS WITH TWO CLIMATES 
I SN’T IT ODD that a man may own a forty-acre tract 
of land and, by planting apples on it, find that part of 
it is in one climate and part in another! 
When these trees have grown up and arrived at the 
time for bearing fruit, the farmer may find that those in 
one part of the orchard bloom ten days earlier in the 
spring than do those in another part. I have actually seen 
such an orchard, part in full bloom and part without a 
single flower. 
Careful study has shown that this is a matter not of 
soil but of climate. There may be climatic differences in 
a single orchard that are as marked as though one part of 
it were five hundred miles farther north than the other. 
Part of such an orchard would run up the gentle slope 
of a hill. The other would lie in the hollow. The trees 
on the hill would bloom earlier than the others. The 
climate there is milder than it is in the hollow. 
There is a peculiar reason for this. The reason is that 
the trees on the hillside have “ air drainage.” Those in 
the hollow have not. 
It is well known that cold air is heavier than warm air. 
The cold air that gets into a room in the winter time 
settles near the floor. The warm air tends to rise to the 
ceiling. 
So it is with this orchard. The cold air of spring settles 
in the low places. The low parts of this two-climate or- 
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