roots on one side and bend the tree over to the ground, securing its safety through the winter at the expense of the few severed roots. By an apparent paradox, peach-trees are always planted in an exposed place. This is in order that the sun may not act upon the buds and cause them to start too soon.
Plant House of Insectary. For Study of Insects.
Apples endure bravely the rigor of the New England winter, proving their right of descent from the wild stock still to be found, here and there, on the neighboring hills, small and sturdy as mountain ponies. Pears, too, are left exposed, as are also the large vineyards, it being thought best to discard from cultivation such varieties as cannot endure the climate.
The strawberries are covered with old straw and hay, but the raspberries and blackberries shirk for themselves.
Tender flowering plants are protected or brought into the greenhouses. The hyacinths and tulips are covered, not because they require it, but to prevent the frost from going so deep as to delay their early appearance in the spring. And the pine boughs which are set up around the rhododendrons and laurels and andromedas are not a shield from cold, but from the too direct rays of the winter sun.
In testing methods of protection, the construction of greenhouses is noteworthy. Concrete walls are compared with those of hollow brick, and both with a framed hollow wall, covered with lining boards, building paper, and sheathing. Preference is given to the last.
Of putting on the sash and of heating and glazing there are four or five methods employed. The experiments in heating have been carried on for several years, and a careful record kept of the results. Small pipes, in this test, are preferred to large, hot water to steam, and under-bench to over-bench piping. In glazing the trial of zinc strip is watched with interest,— the Z strip, as it is called, from the shape of the extreme ends. It lays over one glass and under the other, forming a close joint and a flat surface to meet the sash bar.
For the preservation of fruit and vegetables there are the storage cellars. In the great outer room, the celery will be housed in the fall. In the cold rooms opening from it, the vegetables will find place. They are filled now with berries picked for market. Great Sharpless and Bubach strawberries, the luscious Beder Wood and the tempting "Twenty-four." Raspberries, too, are here in abundance,
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