WINTER MEETING 1SS0. 15 



The removal of the lower limbs of an evergreen destroys its beauty for all time. 

 In planting close screens for hedges it is necessary to shear the foliage, but 

 then the cutting should be so managed, as to give a natural form to the trees ; 



The square shearing is too artificial to be beautiful, and is to be avoided. 



J. Austin Scott. — I believe in shearing, and think if I could transport the 

 gentlemen here to my place they would see beauty that had been developed in 

 evergreens by the severe use of knife and shears. I do not like white pine as 

 well as Austrian or Scotch. I heartily indorse Mr. Lyon's tribute to the hem- 

 lock ; it certainly is the most beautiful of the evergreens. I have found the 

 Norway spruce to stand shearing even better than the arbor vitae. 



J. Lannin, South Haven. — I wish to say a word in criticism of the employ- 

 ment of evergreens as a screen to the orchard. The question of whether this 

 is a good practice may turn upon locality. We at the west shore do not want 

 protection from the west winds. They are our safest breezes. As regards the 

 protection to the fruit when nearly grown, I doubt if a screen of evergreens 

 would be of much benefit, especially if we take the advice of the best fruit men 

 and plant on the reliefs of ground. In my own case a screen of this kind 

 would be worse than useless. 



Mr. Lyon. — In Mr. Lannin' s case he may be correct, since no screen on either 

 the west or the north sides of his orchard could, at least for many years, shel- 

 ter the trees to any great extent, if planted on the border of the orchard, for 

 the reason that such borders are on lower ground; so that screens must be 

 grown to a very considerable height before they become effective. I know that 

 many men at the lake shore have so much faith in the lake as a protection 

 that they prefer a full exposure to the lake breezes. The two severe winters 

 of the last decade, however, gave at least some of these gentlemen the idea that 

 it may even be possible to have too much of a good thing. Some of them lost 

 peach trees by the hundred, clearly in consequence of full westerly and north- 

 erly exposure, with long continued cold. In fact, we have in mind a peach 

 orchard, directly upon the bluff, to which the orchard committee of 1873 

 awarded a first premium, but which, during the next winter, was killed out- 

 right by the severe and long continued cold, with the exception of a few of the 

 trees standing upon the east side, inclined from the lake. A neighboring 

 orchard, similarly situated, but sheltered from lake winds by a belt of trees, 

 came through the same winter uninjured. 



George Taylor, Kalamazoo. — I am in favor ef screens for protection, and my 

 opinion has been formed from a long experience in this country and in Scot- 

 land. 



F. M. Holloway, Hillsdale. — It seems to me we should look to this matter 

 of screens for protection to home and stock, not only from a humanitarian 

 standpoint, but as a question of pecuniary interest. I am satisfied that I save 

 twenty-five per cent in feed to my stock in winter because of a screen of white 

 and yellow oak that protects my barn and yard. We want to give stock exer- 

 cise and recreation, but in order to do this it is not necessary to have it so bleak 

 about the barn that they have to wear half their flesh off to keep warm. A 

 windbreak of oaks on the east and west of my orchard I count as a great bene- 

 fit in the way that Mr. Lyon suggests. But I do beg to differ with him in the 

 matter of shearing. I would not make the evergreens assume monstrous forms, 

 but I consider the free use of the knife as important in shaping them to pro- 

 duce the most satisfactorv effect. 



Mr. Healy, South Haven. — I wish to enter my protest against screens in 



