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16
EXPOSURE.
An eastern exposure, though favourable to the vine, is less so than one to the south, as it is generally observed, that vines looking to the east, are more injured by frost. The rays of the rising sun striking suddenly on the tender leaves and flower of a plant, frozen during a cold night, has the effect of burning and destroying them, in the same manner as mortification is the consequence of exposing to a sudden heat, a limb which has been frost-bitten[1].
- ↑ It is remarkable, that English gardeners prefer an eastern exposure, for reasons the very reverse of the above. "An open aspect to the east," says Abercrombie, in his Practical Gardener, "is itself a point of capital importance in laying out a garden or orchard, on account of the early sun. When the sun can reach the garden at its rising, and continue a regular influence, increasing as the day advances, it has a gradual and most beneficial effect in dissolving the hoar frost which the past night may have scattered over young buds, leaves, and blossoms, or setting fruit. On the contrary, when the sun is excluded from the garden till about ten in the morning, and then suddenly darts on it with all the force derived from considerable elevation, the situation is bad, particularly for fruit, bearing plants in the spring months; the powerful rays of heat at once melt the icey particles, and immediately acting on the moisture thus created, scald the tender blossom, which drops as if nipped by a malignant blight."
In this, there seems to me to be no contradiction, but what may be accounted for by difference of climate.
The sun, in England, seldom rises free from clouds, and never
