fire, is quickly condensed as it comes in contact with the surrounding air. The heat of condensation. thus becomes manifest in the lower air. The heat of the fire is thus in a measure trapped and distributed throughout the lower stratum of the air, and greatly aids in protecting the plants. Every quart of water thus evaporated and again condensed in the surrounding air would be sufficient to raise the temperature ten degrees throughout a space eighty feet square and deep."

Smudges have long been used in the vineyards of parts of Europe. A sketch of some of the practices may add to the interest of this discussion.* "Protection from frost is often secured by the use of smudges, namely, piles or bundles of such stuff as will produce a great smoke while burning. They are placed around the field and lighted at the approach of frost, and the smoke which arises from trees hanging over the fields, will, after the manner of clouds, tend to keep the escaping heat near the earth. Pliny is said to have recommended the practice, and as early as the sixteenth century it was advised by the great French agriculturist, Olivier de Serres, who wrote: 'Frost is repelled from the vine if, foreseeing it, you produce in various parts of your vineyard thick smokes by means of wet straw or half-rotten manures. These sunder the air and dissolve the nuisance. * * * * Prepare them in good season by building here and there in your fields little piles of the above mentioned matters,

* Prepared by my student, W. S. Andrews, B. A.

Smudging in Europe.

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which shall be lighted without delay whenever necessary.' The practice was obligatory in at least one part of Germany at the end of the last century. In Mr. Héguilus' pamphlet* is quoted a set of regulations, issued in the Bailiwick of Plorzheim (Grand Duchy of Baden) in 1796, which provides that the inhabitants of the communes shall be divided into companies of twelve or eighteen men, under a chief, to operate in districts assigned them by an official inspector, and provides for a system of night watchmen, whose duty it was to give warning of the necessity for lighting the fires. 'Whoever of the inhabitants,' Article VII. of these regulations reads, 'shall refuse to obey, shall be prosecuted before the bailiff and receive exemplary punishment.' Boussingault found the custom among the Indians of Peru, who inherited it from the pre-Spanish civilization.

"Various substitutes for the bundles of straw, and such primitive smudges, have been proposed, and a number of patented compositions are on the French market. Mr. A. Lippens, of Ghent, in a letter, describes several of them. He writes:

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'Generally they' [i. e., the French vine-growers] use three bundles of small fagots, in which they insert half-dried hay and wet straw. A line of about fifty suffices for a hundred acres.' The cost is about ten cents an acre. 'More enlightened vine-growers use the heavy oils of coal gas from

*Procédé Héguilus, "La Vigne et les gelées printanières." Lodève (Hérault),

which the pitch has been taken. About four-fifths of a quart is placed in a flat iron-ware dish. Ten of these will protect a vineyard of one hundred acres; twenty, one of four hundred acres. The dishes are to be set closer together at the two ends of the line than in the middle, and a supply of oil must be held ready in reserve in case that, on account of wind or of great clearness at sunrise, another firing should be found necessary.'

"M. Lestout, of Bordeaux, has an invention, as described in his pamphlet, as follows: 'It consists of little cubical boxes, twenty centimeters (a little less than eight inches) square, weighing seven kilos (fifteen pounds four ounces), and costing about seventy-five centimes (fifteen cents) apiece. These are placed around the field to be protected at a distance of ten meters (thirty-two feet ten inches) apart, and are easily ignited from a torch. The fire emits a black smoke, which can be rendered more dense by pouring water upon the smudges. After awhile, the columns of smoke fuse into a thick cloud, which settles upon the field, and elevates the temperature by two or three degrees. The fires can be instantly put out by an extinguisher.' M. Lestout declares that three hundred smudges, costing two hundred and twenty-five francs (forty-five dollars), will protect a vineyard three thousand meters square-i. e., one containing nine hundred hectares (about two thousand two hundred acres)-namely, at a cost of twenty-five centimes (five cents) per two and onehalf acres.

"The system of Lagrolet is said to give a very dense, heavy and persistent cloud. The composition is delivered in barrels, the contents of which are in a solid mass, which must be broken up into pieces. Three of these are leaned together like a tripod, in little hollows in the ground, about fifteen yards apart. "In the Audibert system, the smudges are made by a mixture of tar, creosote and sawdust - easily made and easy to use. There is a system of Tanzin, and others, the details of which it is not necessary now to discuss.

"Lestout advertises that he is able to furnish a system of devices by which warning is given of approaching frost, or by which the smudges can be fired automatically, when the mercury descends to a certain degree. Héguilus has also invented a system of signals and lighters. It is not necessary to dwell upon either of these, further than to remark in passing that a system of automatic lighting will not fulfill its full purpose unless it is so arranged that it will light the fires on the side of the field from which the air is moving. Otherwise one may have the satisfaction of protecting his neighbor's vineyard and not his own. To secure the maximum protection, the proprietors should join in common effort to protect a whole district at once, as Lestout recommends; and this, it appears from his pamphlet, is being done in France. He gives the statutes of a syndicate formed in 1890 by one hundred and fifteen proprietors in the district of Moulis, Médoc - which make pretty complete pro

a

vision for joint action and quotes a letter from their treasurer, in which it is stated that the cost of guaranteeing two million vines for a year was one and a quarter franes (twenty-five cents) per thousand vines. He gives a letter from another syndicate of sixty proprietors at Saussac, in the Médoc, describing a successful attempt to keep the frost from their vines on April 27, 1888. The wires attaching the vines were coated with ice. It was decided to light the smudges at two o'clock in the morning, when one hundred and thirty were lighted, placed at a distance apart of twelve meters (a little under forty feet), thus extending along a line one thousand five hundred and fifty meters (not quite a mile) long. The report states that not only the vineyards, but everything that frost ordinarily destroys, fields of clover, potatoes, peas, everything, in fact, covered by the cloud, from the line of smudges extending back to a depth of three thousand meters (say two and three-fourth miles), covering a surface of five hundred and fifty hectares (one thousand three hundred and seventy-five acres), was saved, while the fields not covered by the cloud suffered from the effects of the frost on that same day. The one hundred and thirty smudges were only twothirds burnt, and the cost was estimated at thirteen centimes (less than three cents) a hectare (two and one-half acres). Some of Lestout's correspondents express the hope that a law will be passed providing that when two-thirds of the proprietors of a district elect to form a syndicate, they will be