3i8 



ILLINOIS STATE HOKTICTJLTURAL SOCIETY. 



I have seen, in the last five years, over a thousand fine evergreens, 

 twenty to fifty feet high, which had been planted with my own hands, 

 nurtured with care, and almost worshiped, cut down as cumberers of the 

 ground, on two of three tracts of land sold, seeming almost a peremptory 

 order to recant my teachings of former years ; yet you, gentlemen, will 

 please understand me, like Galileo, to whisper, " It does move, though;" 

 slowly, it is true, yet this very important work is progressing. My part 

 in it is done. 



DISCUSSION UPON EVERGREENS. 



The Secretary. — Mr. President, I wish to call attention to the 

 remark in Mr. Edwards' excellent paper that the "oftener evergreens are 

 root-pruned or transplanted in nursery the better." Of course, he 

 intended to be understood to mean they should be several times trans- 

 planted or root-pruned. My practice is, and I think it the best one, 

 to transplant once in two years where growth is vigorous, otherwise every 

 third spring. 



Mr. Minkler. — I am almost always preaching from the text — Plant 

 Evergreens! And I reiterate: plant in groups and belts for protection. 

 Plant rows of White pines near your buildings and farm yards ; wind- 

 brakes more than pay expenses and for the ground they occupy even in 

 the saving of feed for your animals by keeping them warmer in winter, 

 to say nothing of increasing their comfort — which is really one of the 

 first things we should take into the account ; for a man has but little 

 humanity about him who does not and will not provide for the comfort of 

 his dumb brutes. 



It is a fact, too, that fields protected by shelter-belts from the hot, 

 drying winds don't dry up so much as open prairie land; so that the 

 space they occupy is more than paid for by the increase in the amount of 

 crops in a dry season. 



Plant, too, for ornamental hedges. The White pine may be pruned 

 into a compact form by taking care not to cut off the whole lengths of 

 the two-year-old wood. 



Mr. Galusha. — I practice cutting off from half to two-thirds the 

 lengths of the young, leading shoots of the pines — White, Austrian and 

 Scotch-T-while the new growth is yet soft, when I wish to give them a 

 close, compact growth. They then form new buds around the young 

 shoots, and the next year there will be from three to five shoots where 

 there would otherwise have been but one. 



Mr. Garrett agreed with all that Mr. Minkler had said ; and 

 added, that root-pruning had the effect to thicken the growth, and at 

 the same time prepare the trees for safe removal from the nursery. 



