sult of later frost. It would occur to me that the sun perhaps had some effect in relieving the destruction of those frosts, and that by relieving that effect the buds were allowed to remain, which produced a fair crop in that particular part of the tree.

Now another question pertaining to the sweet potato scab. I have been growing many of them for many years; perhaps I have been growing them twenty years. Whether that relieves it from scab or not, I have used a small application every two or three years of air-slacked lime, and a liberal application of sand. I find that the potatoes on the untreated land right beside those that have been treated are affected, and those that have been treated are not or are freer from it.

Mr. Montgomery: I notice the professor says there was a large loss of the Hubbardston. I don't question that at all, but I should not like to let that statement go as being universal. The Hubbardston at my place did not kill in the nursery row, while the Roine Beauty and the Rambo did. The Hubbardston was all right. None of the trees in my orchard were injured by that freeze, but in the nursery row the Rome Beauty and the Rambos were killed, and the Hubbardston was not affected at all. I did not quite catch the cause of the abnormal growth of timothy, whether or not it was weather conditions. The leguminous plants seem to have been affected in the opposite way.

Professor Selby: With respect to all of the true grasses, the ideal conditions for their growth are abundant moisture and low temperature, and we had both.

The grasses are

Mr. Montgomery: It wasn't the sunshine? Professor Selby: No, it wasn't the sunshine. typically the plants that can get along without high temperatures and without abundant sunshine. On the other hand, leguminous plants are the very ones that cannot. Potatoes also.

A Member: Do you claim potatoes require a high temperature? Professor Selby: I do not say they require a high temperature, but they require bright sunshine. They do not necessarily require high temperature; that is right. But the potato crop is perhaps the clearest expression of the action of the leaves in connection with the starch formation. With the tubers there is no reserve to draw on in producing, as with fruit trees. It must all be produced that season. The potato being a native of the Chilian Highlands would be accustomed, as its parasite proves, to low temperature, but bright sunshine.

A Member: In Ireland and Germany do they have bright sunlight? Professor Selby: They have very satisfactory periods of bright sunlight, yes.

Mr. Gill: Professor Selby did not allude to the effect of the freeze in the fall of 1906 of the fruit that was then on the trees and not picked. The Columbus Horticultural Society had a meeting in Mr. Vergon's

orchard that year after the frost. They had not picked before the frost more than half of the fruit, and they were picking then the fruit that was frozen solid, I understood. I would like to inquire the condition of that fruit later on, from the fact that I heard that many orchardists, feeling that the apples were destroyed, took them off, and made them into cider. If that is not necessary, I think it is an important thing for the fruit grower to know. Then I would like to ask how his crop turned out in comparison with the expectations and estimates made by the Horticultural Society members that were there. They thought he would have about 25 to 30 per cent. of a crop. Then again their Snow apples seemed to be nice, and I would like to inquire how that keeps in cold storage for late sales.

The President: Mr. Vergon, can you answer that question?

Mr. Vergon: In regard to the Snow apple, I do not think much of it for our part of the country. It is almost impossible with us to grow it right. Along about picking time, or say ten days before, it is very likely to crack, small cracks, and a good many of them on an apple, and when it does that it won't keep. What causes that crack I do not know.

Mr. Gill: The particular point I wanted to bring out was in regard to these frozen apples that were frozen on the tree. At the time they were picked they didn't seem to indicate any damage whatever, and whether they went into market all right or not was the point I want to make.

A Member: We had some apples that were frozen through solid three or four times before they were picked, and they came out all right. It didn't seem to hurt them a bit.

The President: How did they keep?

A Member: First rate, until the next spring. But the ones that were on the ground when they froze, it did affect them.

The President: Did they have as much juice in them after they were frozen-the ones on the tree?

A Member: I couldn't tell any difference. I think so far as we could tell they did.

Mr. Pierce: Didn't the apples drop very soon after the frost?

A Member: Not until very late. They did very late.

Mr. Pierce: In Northern Ohio they drop off.

A Member: Ours did not do that.

all Ben Davis that were frozen that way.

However, ours were mostly [Laughter.]

Mr. Shively: We are about fifty miles farther south. That frost caught us with about 6,000 bushels of apples on the trees and several thousand bushels on the ground, and it is a question of results. As you will know, most of those were Ben Davis. I would say we saw no bad results in them. I believe it improved the Ben Davis [Laughter], and

another fact is that a car stored in cold storage in Dayton were kept until about the first of April. I delivered them to a commission man there, and they were examined, and they were satisfactory; they were in good condition, so I believe no effect was noted, especially on the Ben Davis, from that frost. It is rather an important matter.

Mr. Shirer: Do I understand that sulphate of iron is not a fungicide? Professor Selby: Practically not. Its fungicide value is so small, I think we should ignore it.

Mr. Shirer: We have a inan in our county who used it year before last on his apples, and he claimed it did as well as sulphate of copper. I did a little spraying on some grapes, and as Mr. Cox has said, I did not not like the looks of the fruit.

Mr. Knellinger: I have had a little experience on the winter killing of the young trees. I am sorry to know that our Rome Beauty does get killed sometimes. I would like to know the conditions that were surrounding the trees that were killed. I lost about 20 per cent. That was fourteen or fifteen years ago. The trees were planted in the spring, and were well planted, and were well cultivated with the hoe and spade. I got a tremendous growth on the trees the first year, too much growth, more than I would try to get again on any kind of a tree. That winter they were so full of sap that they burst all around the top of the ground. Nobody heard tell of the like in that country. Even our Horticultural Society thought I was wrong-did not believe it. A number of the trees. were killed, a great many of them, and I replaced them that spring. All of these I believe I could have saved if I applied the remedy I adopted afterward. Do not grow the trees so fast, and if they should get strong and rugged, take and throw a load of dirt up to them, around them; pack it up about eight or ten inches. I have not had the same trouble since. I have used that dirt and that is what I adopted, and if it is worth anything to you, all right, but do not grow the tree too fast.

Professor Davis: I should like to ask a question for my own information. Perhaps some one here can help me out. Along the line of winter killing of trees I have had some experience during the last year myself. I have always had the idea that fall setting of trees was not as satisfactory generally for our locality as spring setting, in a practical 'way at least, although the theory may be all right. But last fall a year ago I had ordered some 1,500 or 1,800 apple trees, and in order to save the rush of spring work somewhat and divide it up, I set about 400 of those trees in the fall, and took special pains to pile dirt up high about the trees so as to get good drainage, as it seemed to me, and give protection. The others I heeled in and set out the following spring, Rome Beauty of the same variety. The result was that 90 per cent. of those that were set in the fall were dead the following spring, and only about to per cent. of those heeled in on the same order from the same nursery,

put in in the spring, were dead. I am not able to account for that except by the greater exposure of those trees set out in the fall. In all of my planting last spring of some 4,000 or 5,000 trees, the loss was relatively high with the exception of the planting in pears. I had been getting my trees from a western nursery, which has agreed at least to give me their own growing throughout. In the pears the loss was not more than I per cent.; I think five trees out of five hundred were dead, but in the apples the loss was much greater. In one or two varieties, Grimes' Golden and Jonathan, the loss was as much as 25 per cent. In other varieties it was quite a good deal less. The interesting part was that it seemed to me up to the first of July that we were not going to lose the trees at all. The trees all started out leaves, but by the middle of July or the first of August we began to realize our loss would be heavy indeed. The roots did not start. They never got a hold on the

soil. I think this experience has a bearing upon the paper.

A Member: Did you set those trees out with your own hands? Professor Davis: No, not all of them, but I helped set some out. A Member: Did you set them out dry, or did you puddle the roots? Professor Davis: The earth was in good condition when they were set out, quite moist, but the roots were not puddled.

Professor Selby: I would like to ask Professor Davis whether he examined the condition of those trees during the period between the setting, and the time they appeared to die.

Professor Davis: Yes, I did. I examined them very frequently. I went over the trees, as I always do when I receive an order, and examined them carefully, stripped bits of the bark here and there, and I must confess I thought I had the best lot of trees when I received them I ever had received. The tops and all seemed to be in good condition.

Professor Selby: You say the trees that were planted in the spring. were heeled in?

Professor Selby: And did you observe any tendency toward brown cambium before you observed they were dying?

Professor Davis: In the heeled trees, yes. In those heeled trees we picked out, I suppose, a couple of dozen trees out of three or four or five hundred Rome Beauties that were blighted with brown cambium, so that we did not care to plant them.

Professor Selby: That would seem to indicate that the injury was greater in the heeled in trees than was apparent, as I interpret it, that the trees heeled in really suffered more than they showed. The brown cambium might of course not be attributed to that, but there have been very many astonishing results in this study of the injuries to young apple trees. I would not have believed myself the statements that I have been forced to make as a result of the investigations, if they had come

.

to me a year ago. It is of course a great shame that these results are so, but on Mr. Allen's ground-he had ten acres in Trumbull County, at a very high elevation in a region where all the peach trees under three years of age were killed by the October frost-ten acres of Northern Spy to be top grafted. He top grafted those this spring. When I visited there in early April we examined a great many; and did not find more than-I estimated 15 to 20 per cent. of injuries of trees injured as shown by the brown cambium, but when they came a little later to topgraft those I suppose the brown cambiuum ran up to nearly 60 per cent., and they found actually that many trees that appeared healthy had to be cut down to what was the snow line at the time of that frost, in order to get an area where the cambium was of the proper color, and where they could have an assurance of sound wood to do the grafting. I want to repeat briefly one point well to bear in mind with respect to this killing. This winter killing of whole orchards is but a repetition of what happened to Baldwins in Erie County in 1880 and 1881.

The Secretary: And Smith Cider, too.

Professor Selby: Yes, Smith Cider, too. If you bear in mind our conditions during the fall period of 1906 you will have the explanation. Excessive rainfall and excessively high temperature for August and September. Ordinarily the slowing down of growth, and the ripening begins in September, often earlier, because the temperatures at night begin to drop, and the plant begins to get ready for the winter, and in the presence of stimulating conditions as against the average slowing down condition, we have the great danger-and of course as one gentleman has pointed out, it is the tree that was growing fastest at the end of the season that would be in condition to be killed by freezing.

Mr. Pierce: These trees of Professor Davis' were not raised here, but in the West, where the conditions did not prevail.

Professor Selby: They probably did prevail there, because the conditions were general through the whole United States. I don't want to be misapprehended in connection with this. It is perhaps a passing condition. We won't have it repeated again, possibly in ten or fifteen years, unless these orchards are cultivated late with these types. Before closing this subject—I presume the Chairman is about to close it—I would like to ask the co-operation of a limited number of orchardists in this distirct in connection with the modified Bordeaux mixture.

A Member: I would like to ask this question, spoken of many times in institutes in this country, and that is when you set out a fruit tree, should you make a mixture of the natural dirt where the tree is to be set, and cow manure with water, and dip the tree roots into that before setting them out? They claim that trees set out that way are more successful than those set in the dry dirt.

Professor Selby: That is a common practice known as puddling