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304 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REPORT. 
be thinned faster than an equal number can be picked when ripe 
it has required about as much time to thin a tree as it has to harvest 
the ripe fruit.” The thinned fruit, being of a higher grade, is 
particularly well adapted for marketing in boxes or in any other 
way appealing to the fancy trade. “ Thinned apples can be handled 
more economically than unthinned apples because they have pro- 
portionately less of those grades which form the least profitable 
part of the crop, namely, the No. 2’s, the drops, and the culls. 
The general conclusion was that it would pay to thin apples 
where there is a large crop set and the chance for small fruit very 
great. Otherwise it would not pay except in those instances where 
fruit is removed to prevent the breaking of the tree. 
WINTER. INJURY *TO FRUIT *TREES 
In a bulletin on this subject are given the results of a study of 
the injury resulting from the extreme climatic conditions of the 
season of 1903-4. The writer states that the growing conditions 
during the summer of 1903 “ were not normal and altogether favor- 
able. Insects and fungus epidemics were serious.” It was a com- 
bination of the unfavorable growing season with the extremely 
cold winter which followed that injured or killed many trees, the 
peach and pear suffering more than the others. The writer states 
that winter injury is usually classified under three heads: Root 
injury, trunk injury, and branch injury. The first of these, while 
quite common in some of our western states, is very rare in New 
York. Trunk injury “may be due to the freezing, causing death 
or injuries within the trunk or limbs of the active tissue, known 
as cambium.” This cambium, which is the growing part of the 
tree, is capable of withstanding a great deal of cold. Injury of 
this kind was, however, quite common in New York State in 1904. 
Branch injury is the killing back of the twigs and younger branches. 
It is stated that this occurs commonly every year, the amount of 
such injury depending largely upon how well the wood ripens in 
the autumn. ; 
A general discussion is given of the cause of the changes which 
take place in tissue injured by frost and attention is drawn to the 
fact that the readiness with which such injury takes place depends 
largely upon the amount of water in the wood. It is stated that 
it is impossible to say how much cold any given tree will stand, . 
* Bul. 269; also Rpt. 24:215 (1905). 
