The Buds Killed

Benton Harbor, March 26. - About midnight Saturday night the mercury took a drop downward far below freezing point with a howling northeast wind, changing about daybreak to a veritable blizzard from the northwest, with snow whirling in a blinding fury, lind continued as bad or worse until late Sunday afternoon, freezing solid ice all through this section. This will prove a fearful calamity to all fruit growere in this fruit belt. as the continued warm weather so early had started the buds of early peachea, grapes and blackberries. Many thousaud trees were just ready to blossom, but every bud is black and dead, doing man y thousand dollars damage in this eounty. Sti'awTjerries were star tina: up green, but are f rozen to death. Even in the most sheltered fields they are killed. Many farmers had put mortgages on their farms to live through the unusually hard times, uepending upon the returns from early fruit to pay theru off. This is without doubt thé worst calamity that has befallen the growers in this fruit belt eiu'ce the peach 3'ellow scourge of 1876 and 1877, when a prosperous district was completely devasted of its main reBource and land values droüped from 75 to 90 per cent, the effects of wh'ich were almost forgotten by those who lost their fortunes and hornea at that time.