st that is the general judgment at the present. Peach buds
are killed of course, and it will be lucky if the trees have escaped.
All blackberries, but the Snyder, are dead down to the snow line--and
some think the Snyder has not escaped, for reasons given further on.
Examinations made of the buds of Bartlett, Duchess, Howell, Tyson,
Bigarreau, Seckel, Buffum, Easter Buerre, and others yesterday, showed
them all to be about equally frosted and blackened, and probably
destroyed. Last year our pears suffered a good deal from the sleet of
the second of February, which clung to the trees ten days, and the crop
was a light one. This year, if appearances can be trusted, there will be
less. In the many intense freezes of the last twenty-five years, I have
never known pear buds to be seriously injured; last year being a marked
exception and this still more so. Hardy grapes have probably suffered as
much, and the tender varieties are completely done for. How well the May
cherry has resisted the low temperature remains to be seen. As for the
sweet cherries, it is probably the end of them.

There were buds set for an unusually abundant crop of apples in
1884--the Presidential year. The hardy varieties have escaped material
damage, no doubt, but some of the tender Eastern varieties, like the
Baldwin, Roxbury Russet, in all reasonable probability, have not only
lost their buds but their lives also.

* * * * *

The disasters following the very low temperature of last week have no
doubt been increased by the immaturity of the wood, due to the cool,
moist summer. If summers like those of 1882-83 are not warm enough to
ripen the corn crop, buds and wood of fruit trees will not acquire a
maturity that resists intense cold as we see by our experience with
pears, grapes, and peaches in the fruit season of 1883, and which is
almost sure to be repeated with aggravations in 1884. Possibly the
ground being but lightly frozen and protected by a good coat of snow,
may save the apple trees and others from great disaster following thirty
to thirty-five degrees below zero, when falling on half ripened wood,
but the reasonable fear is that orchards on high land in Northern and
Central Illinois, have been damaged more than last year. If so perhaps
it were better after all, since it will open the eyes of a great many to
the mistakes in location heretofore made, and lead them to put out
future orchards where they ought t