Hints on the Landscape Improvement of Oountry Homes. 81 



should only expose my ignorance by any attempt in this direction. I shall, 

 therefore, confine myself to the northern and central portion of the country 

 covered by the membership of this Society. 



In this portion the winter with its howling blasts is the prominent agent 

 of discomfort, of expense and, I may add, of death. Toward off its chilling, 

 life-destroying frost millions of grates glow with the carbon of the coal 

 mines, and tens of millions of stomachs grow warm as they consume the 

 golden carbon of the maize. 



The farmer of Massachusetts, who raises his small-eared corn by the 

 hardest work, with hand hoeing and hill fertilizing, shudders when he hears 

 that the Kansas farmer is using his corn to feed his kitchen stove. Yet all 

 over the West thousands of bushels of corn are being consumed for the 

 production of heat with much less reason or excuse than that that leads to 

 the burning of corn in the fireplace. When the Kansas farmer has corn so 

 cheap that it will not buy its heating equivalent in coal, then he is justified 

 in burning it. Such a condition is unfortunate, but it can not be said to be 

 wasteful. When, however, he, by neglect, permits his family and stock to 

 suffer from outward cold and obliges them to consume larger quantities of 

 food, so that the internal fires of the body can in a measure make up for 

 the outward exposure, then he is wasteful and unjustifiable in the direct ratio 

 to the ease with which he can surround himself with protection from cold. 



I have often wished, as I have passed cheerless, wind tortured homes, that 

 some exact estimate could be made in dollars and cents of the value of the 

 heat driven off and dissipated each winter. 



The blowing of a northern wind for a few hours and the lowering of the 

 thermometer a few degrees causes thousands of fires to be lighted in this 

 city of New Orleans, and the actual expense to the citizens of this city of 

 a cold northern wind, lasting but a short time, would amount in the aggre- 

 gate to a very large sum of money, and when the temperature is lowered 

 sufficiently to cause frost, the cost of a norther is very largely increased. 

 The cost of lighting the fires, the fuel consumed,, and the cost of the extra 

 clothing, represent what would be saved were a barrier erected that would 

 keep off these cold northern winds. 



Of course this would be impossible, but it illustrates the thought I wished 

 to get at, the value that attaches to the shutting out of cold winds. Last 

 winter, in passing from my home to Kansas City, I did not see a single home 

 that had any artificial or complete protection from prevailing winds. Be- 

 yond Kansas City, in Kansas and Nebraska, wind breaks are quite common, 

 but they are all of deciduous trees. Now the difl[erence in value between 

 deciduous and evergreen trees as a winter protection is about the same as 

 that between gauze and flannel, and I often find myself wondering why so 

 few avail themselves of nature's beautiful winter garments. It is really» 

 however, the old story of utility first. Quick growing deciduous trees make 

 firewood. 



The first point I would make, then, would be to plant evergreen trees, not 



