country is dry and desert, and the rapidly developing orchard districts are entirely dependent on irrigation. One beautiful little valley, the Hood River Valley of Oregon, lies just on the border line of the humid section. The orchards in this little valley do fairly well without irrigation, but all of the water of Hood River in a few years will be consumed in the valley irrigating the apple orchards and the strawberries.

EASTERN ROCKY MOUNTAIN SLOPE.

Along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, close to the frontal range and foothills, there is a very considerable fruit region. This has the characteristic cold interior climate, and yet the protection of the mountains and the excellent air drainage allows the apple to grow in perfection as far north as Denver. In fact, the orchards begin at Fort Collins, Colorado. One of the finest irrigated orchard districts on the eastern slope is around Canyon City, where the waters of the Arkansas River, after emerging from the Grand Canyon and the Royal Gorge, are used to grow apples, cherries and strawberries. This region is too cold for peaches, although some are grown by tipping down and protecting in winter time. Southward into New Mexico this same region broadens out, and the peach and other tender stone fruits are added to the list. In the Pecos Valley of New Mexico there is a more extensive apple region and a few peach orchards are reported as doing well in various parts of the Territory. The high plateau carries fruit culture clear to the Mexican boundary.

WESTERN SLOPE AND GREAT BASIN.

It is on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, however, that fruit culture has reached its highest development in all this section. In western Colorado around the cities of Montrose, Delta, Paonia, Palisade, and other adjacent localities, fruit culture is pushing ahead at a rapid pace. Not only the apple and the peach are grown, but the pear, domestic plums and prunes, the apricot, the cherry, and even the Vinifera grape. It is evident from a study of the behavior of the trees, especially when contrasted with the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in the same latitude, that the Pacific Coast influences reach clear to this region and favorably affect the climate as far as fruit culture is concerned. The apple and the peach are the leading commercial fruits of these localities.

Very similar conditions obtain along the slopes of the Wasatch Mountains at Ogden, Salt Lake, Provo, and other points in Utah. In fact, there is a great orchard region along the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, beginning away up in Idaho and extending nearly to the Mexican boundary. The orchards are usually grown at an elevation of between 4000 and 5000 feet or perhaps, toward the south, as high as 6000 feet. The ideal conditions are the sloping valleys or the mesas or benches along these valleys close up to the base of the mountains. As one proceeds further and further down the valleys toward the Great Basin at many points, while the soil remains fertile

it is more alkaline; but the still greater difficulties of winter cold and spring frosts becomes pronounced and interfere with peach growing. There is a thermal belt along the base of these mountains, or at least thermal spots where spring frost conditions seldom do damage to the trees. In this great fruit belt only a few special localities have been developed. These are naturally where the region is crossed by the lines of railways. There are a few localities being planted to orchards in Nevada and Arizona but the greater part is undeveloped. When the great projects for irrigation now being carried on by the Government are fully developed, fruit growing by irrigation in the deserts will doubtless be multiplied many, many times. Already the apples and peaches from these orchards make a good showing on the markets not only of Denver, Omaha, Sioux City and Chicago, but even as far east as Boston and New York. A large part of the apples in the Hood River District were bought this season by a New York firm to be shipped to New York City. The apples of the Pajaro Valley of California, though only partly under irrigation, are about threefifths Yellow Newtowns, and the entire crop of Newtowns except the culls, is shipped to Great Britain. In western Colorado the four leading commercial varieties of apples as far as quality is concerned are the Jonathan, Rome, Winesap and Grimes. Of course, many other varieties are grown, in fact, too many, the orchardists claim, and there are a good many second-quality varieties, such as the Ben Davis, York Imperial, Missouri, Gano, etc. The desert air produces a most beautiful wax-like color in these apples. Most of the varieties are quite thoroughly covered with a bloom like the plum. In appearance they are certainly the most stylish and showy of any apples that can be grown. The apples produced in the moisture localities nearest the mountains, and especially the Hood River apples of eastern Oregon, are certainly very delicious in eating quality, approaching very closely to the crispness and juiciness of the eastern apple. As a rule, however, the flavor of these apples does not quite equal that of the corresponding varieties grown in the Mississippi Valley or the Eastern States, but when we think that the leading apple of eastern Oregon is the high-quality Esopus, we can understand the commercial rating of this fruit. The same principle applies to the beautiful Grimes, Jonathan, Rome, and other such varieties. By growing naturally high-quality varieties these irrigated orchards. can supply not only the most beautiful and best-keeping apples, but also apples of the highest commercial quality. The experience in selling Esopus, Jonathan and Grimes on the Eastern markets is that their stylish appearance and good keeping qualities overbalance any slight difference in flavor which may be noticed.

Among the peaches of the western slope a similar condition obtains. The delicious Early Crawford is the leading commercial peach, although Elberta is probably being planted to a greater extent in some sections. The date of ripening of these peaches in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, eastern Oregon and Washington corresponds with that of the Michigan peach belt or that of western New York. They are only to a slight degree, therefore, competitors with the much earlier

Pacific Coast fruit or with the greater portion of the eastern peaches. In the past two or three years this fruit appeared in large quantities on the markets of the Atlantic seaboard from Boston to Washington. A certain quantity of this fruit is now being dried, especially the apricots and peaches. A few pears are also handled in this way, and some considerable prune orchards have been planted. This dried fruit, of course, is in direct competition with the California product. As a rule, however, most of the fruit in these sections is shipped fresh to market.

A striking feature of the orchards around Salt Lake City, where quite an extensive fruit region has been developed, is the local character of the marketing. Many of the fruit farms are entirely devoted to supplying the local market. However, around Ogden, along the trans-continental Union Pacific Railroad, orchards are planted of fewer varieties for shipping to Omaha, Chicago, etc.

DISEASES.

Many of the orchards grown under irrigation on the desert show injurious effects from physiological troubles. As a rule, the leaves are smaller and narrower than the corresponding foliage in the humid Eastern States. Sometimes the desert air is so dry as to give the trees a decidedly pinched appearance. Many of the orchards have been planted on soils partially or wholly unsuitable, due to the presence of alkali, gypsum beds or hardpan in the subsoil. On the whole, however, these irrigated orchards in the desert regions are the healthiest and thriftiest of any in the country, with the possible exception of those on the Pacific Coast. The air is so dry that the ordinary leaf-blights and fruit-spots caused by fungi have very little opportunity for development.

In the autumns of 1903 and 1904, I traveled extensively in western Colorado and was unable to find a single fungous spot of apple scab, apple leaf-blight, pear leaf-blight, nor, in fact, any of the common fungous diseases on the leaves and fruit of apples, pears and peaches, with the single exception of the powdery mildew of the apple and the powdery mildew of the peach. This mildew had appeared on a few peach orchards and had even made some spots on the fruit.

A similar condition obtains throughout the irrigated orchards. On the Pacific Coast, where the winter rains often continue into the growing season, pear and apple scab, shot-hole fungus of the peach, prune and apricot, rust and other similar diseases occasionally do some damage. Curl-leaf of the peach is particularly abundant and destructive, but scarcely any trouble of that sort occurs in the desert orchards of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains.

This immunity from diseases of the foliage and fruit, however, does not apply to the roots. Root diseases appear to be particularly abundant in the irrigated orchards. Crown-gall is especialy severe, and the woolly aphis is very bad on the apple in certain places.

On the other hand, the regular eastern pear blight has been distributed over nearly the entire region and is particularly destructive,

even more so than in the Eastern States. The thick fleshy bark and general high state of nutrition of the irrigated orchards seem to favor blight.

Certain insect pests are also unusually serious in this section. The codling moth has to be fought much more vigorously in the irrigated orchards than in the humid eastern United States. As a rule, when the codling moth once gets well started it takes practically all the apples unless vigorously fought by spraying and banding. Among the better class of growers the codling moth is being successfully fought by these methods.

Hence, as a general statement, one may say that, while the number of diseases and perhaps also of insect pests is much less than in the Eastern States, a few bad diseases are, as a rule, more serious than they are in the humid sections.

UNUSUAL PRODUCTIVENESS.

There is one feature of the irrigated orchard in which it differs from the orchard of the East. As a rule, it is annually productive. The intense sunshine of the desert gives to the tree a capacity for assimiliation far exceeding that of the eastern orchards. Trees appear to be able to mature their crop of fruit, make a fair annual growth and restock their twigs and branches and fruit-buds with reserve food materials, so that they can repeat the process the next year. Sometimes trees bear such extreme crops that they are able to produce only a partial crop the next year, but the repetition of crops year after year is certainly much more regular than in the East. This feature is helping a great deal in the commercial success of the industry. The trees bear very young, and the opinion has been expressed that most of the irrigated orchards will be short-lived. There are very few apple orchards in the irrigated districts more than fifteen years old. A few have reached the age of twenty to twenty-five years, and, as these are still vigorous and active, it remains to be seen how long-lived the apple will be in these regions. It probably will vary a good deal, as it does in the east, and we look for the longest-lived trees toward the northward or at the highest elevations in the mountains.

MARKETING.

The style of marketing, including the package and method of packing and shipping the fruit, is the same over practically all this country and is based entirely on California methods. These methods are probably the very best in the world. The apples are nearly all marketed in boxes holding from 40 to 50 pounds or approximately a bushel. The fruit is placed in definite tiers and in very many cases wrapped in paper. A large part of the Hood River crop this past season was wrapped in paper bearing a characteristic label. In fact, just as much pains was taken with these fine Spitzenbergs as is customary with fancy oranges. A great deal of care has also been exercised in packing the apples of the Pajaro district in California, and the same statement could be made about the fine apples of both

western and eastern Colorado. Fancy selected fruit, packed in a fancy package, is the aim of the orchardist in irrigated sections.

The peaches are nearly all packed in 20-pound boxes, that is, flat boxes about 3 to 4 inches high and large enough to hold two layers of the fruit. Here again, all the better grades are usually wrapped.

EFFECTS OF SUPER-HEATED SOILS ON PLANTS.

BY U. P. HEDRICK, Experiment Station, Geneva, N. Y.

This

The earth absorbs more heat from the sun than does the air. excess of heat in the earth must vary with many conditions, as with latitude, altitude, soil, exposure of land, season, moisture in the soil, and so on. Vegetation in the ages past must have adapted itself more or less to the varying heat conditions of the soil. A variation in so important a form of energy as heat could not have escaped plant life and the smallest advantage in soil heat offered in any spot through any of the above or other factors must have been made use of. It is certain that the form and structure of plants and of their organs, and that all of the life events of plants have been greatly modified by the heat of the soil. In our efforts to till the soil, to grow plants, we increase rather than diminsh the importance of soil heat as a factor in plant life. Accurate knowledge of the relation of soil heat to individual species of cultivated plants could not, then, but be of the highest importance in all branches of agriculture and more especially, for obvious reasons, to the horticulturist.

For several years the writer has taken every opportunity of examining greenhouse plants which had been subjected to bottom heat to note in them as far as possible, the influence of super-heated soils. Three distinct experiments have been carried through, none of which have been satisfactory, however, but a record of one of these experiments it has seemed to me might be of interest to this Society. The one which I have chosen was a problem assigned to Mr. J. G. Moore, now of the Wisconsin Experiment Station, for a post-graduate thesis for the master's degree at the Michigan Agricultural College. The task given Mr. Moore was, to make a comparison in as many particulars as possible between cucumber plants grown in the super-heated soil, and others grown in a soil kept as nearly as possible at the temperature of the surrounding air.

The experiment was carried on in a small curvilinear-roofed greenhouse built by Lord and Burnham, nearly perfect in its equipments, and fairly well adapted in most particulars for experimental work. The house was heated by steam and was equipped with three plant benches. A central bench, No. I, had no bottom heat except that furnished through the surrounding atmosphere; bench II, a side bench about a foot and a half from the wall of the greenhouse, received a moderate amount of bottom heat from a coil of steam pipes running beneath it; bench III, at the same distance from the sides of the greenhouse as II, had beneath it a greater number of steam pipes