528 REporT OF THE HORTICULTURAL DEPARTMENT OF THE 
The first of these is latitude which largely determines the ~ 
annual temperature, the amount and intensity of sunlight, and 
the length of the growing season. Now a man must select his 
fruits and even more particularly his varieties with reference 
to latitude and its equivalent, altitude. It is easy enough to 
select the fruit or fruits for a region in a certain altitude or 
latitude but it is far from easy to select the varieties of a par- 
ticular fruit. Thus the Ben Davis, Winesap, Romanite and 
York Imperial groups of apples belong in southern latitudes, 
while the Concord grape and its seventy or more named off- 
spring belong to the North. So with nearly all varieties of our 
fruits; they are either Northerners or Southerners and should 
be kept where they belong. Still the metes and bounds of 
latitude may be set aside by such local modifications as hills, 
valleys, bodies of water, winds and sunshine. Fortunate is the 
man who has his orchards planted only with sorts suited to 
his latitude. Climate is the fruit grower’s greatest asset and 
costs him nothing. 
As with all crops, the soil must largely determine the value 
of a location for a fruit plantation and in choosing land all of 
the characters, as physical structure, richness, power to retain 
moisture and depth must be well considered. As everyone 
knows special fruits have special soil adaptation; the peach 
grows on sand; the plum on clay; apples and pears on loams. 
But the knowledge that the several fruits have adaptations to 
soils is far from sufficient. A man planting fruit should know 
that each individual variety of any fruit will do better in some 
soils than in others. The successful fruit grower will discover 
what these preferences are. The chemist and the soil physicist 
can help but little here; in most cases an actual test in the 
field is the only way of knowing whether a variety will or will 
not thrive in a soil. One property of the soil is too often neg- 
lected; namely, its heat retaining properties. The florist knows 
that the violet and carnation want cool soils but the rose must 
have bottom heat. Some fruits, as the peach and the grape, 
require warm soils; apples and pears will thrive in cooler 
