22

by frost in the Fall. That on large bodies of salt water and
on a reddish or dark soil being entirely uninjured, whilst
only a few miles distant, that away from the water on a light-
soil will be totally killed. The winters in this section are
short, open and mild, and the inhabitants consider them-
selves fortunate in having enough of cold weather to obtain
a plentiful supply of ice for the summer, and if proper atten-
tion be given to the ice ponds this can almost always be done.
The summers are long and pleasant, giving abundant time
for the full culture and development of all kinds of grain,
vegetables, fruits and flowers. Many of the former of excel-
lent quality are indigenous to the country and can be found
on almost every farm—such as many delicious varieties of
grapes, blackberries, whortleberries, sarvice berries, black-
haws, walnut, many exceellnt varieties of hickory nuts and
many other kinds, which come to maturity much earlier in
Spring here, and last much later in the Autumn, than in the
States north or west of us. This is shown by the fact that
strawberries, peaches, cherries, apricots, &c., are fully ten
days earlier at Annapolis than Baltimore, other things being
equal, and whilst the harbor of Baltimore, one of the coldest
borders of this region, is now, while I write, closed to vessels
by the ice, that of Annapolis, only thirty-one miles distant, is
free and open, and lower down the larger harbors are never
closed. Innumerable wild fowl—such as swan, geese and
ducks—spend their winters in the waters of this section,
escaping thus the dreary cold of the winters of the Eastern
and Northwest States. Here, too, many song birds of beau-
tiful plumage spend their summers, raising their brood of
young in the shadows of our forests, thus avoiding the more
excessive heat of their Southern summer homes. These
migratory birds, admirable judges by unerring instinct of a
genial climate, make their appearance much earlier in Mary-
land in the Spring than in the States on our borders, and re-
main much later in the Fall, and the number and variety is
also much greater. This fact, with the early bloom of flow-
ers and fruits, are living thermometric witnesses of the mild-
ness and benificence of tide-water climate far exceeding in
value the inferences drawn from mercurial or colored Alcho-
holic solutions.

GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION OF THE TIDE WATEE SECTION, AND ITS
CONNECTIONS WITH THE GREAT MARTS OF COMMERCE.

This section of Maryland is divided by the Chesapeake
Bay into two parts, that known as the Eastern Shore and
that part of the State on the Western Shore comprising parts
of Harford and Baltimore counties before laid down, and the
five most southern counties west of the Bay, with the excep-
tion of the narrow strip between Baltimore and Havre de