STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 41 



the low grounds, do so from inherent fitness or great power of adaptation 

 — that when Mr. Diinlap fails in growing the trees of the Sweet Cherry, 

 and Mr. Vickroy of the Chestnut, that it means the soils they i)lanted on 

 are not yet fitted for trees that, like them, love a dry, warm subsoil ; that 

 when Mr. Dunlap grows the Soft Maple, and Mr. Vickroy the Ashes, the 

 Catalpa, the Osage Orange, the White Elm and Butternut, with only a 

 small per cent, of loss in the first few years, the chances are that those 

 trees have come in due time to the Central Illinois prairies. 



Here, again, we are admonished that a success or failure, limited in 

 time and area, must not be made too much of. The wonderful success of 

 D. C. Scofield, of Elgin, on a soil "underlaid \\\\\\ gravel at a depth of 

 from six to ten feet," must not be pushed too far as a precedent in talking 

 to men who have blue clay at the same dei)th, and vice versa. The con- 

 ditions are essentially different. And whether the European Larch, the 

 Scotch and Austrian pines are to furnish our future artificial forest, 

 must depend on a much longer experience than we have yet had. 



This leads me to say a word of Evergreens, or Conifers rather. We 

 have three natives of our State that have proved themselves cai)able of 

 enduring our climate, and, at least, some of our soils from youth to old 

 age and large size ; these are the White Pine, the Red Cedar, and the 

 Cypress. The White Pine, of which there are, or at least were, large 

 old forest trees at Rockford, has done more to "build up" America than 

 all other trees. It has a wider natural range of climate, and accommo- 

 dates itself to a greater variety of soils than any of the lumber-furnishing 

 trees of the northern forests. The Red Cedar, according to Gray, has 

 the greatest climate range of any woody plant in America, (from Middle 

 Florida, at 26°, to latitude 67° beyond the Arctic circle.) It is the one 

 evergreen that the drought of the plains cannot kill. " In the dry 

 climate of Texas and the Dacotah region," says Dr. Cooper in the Patent 

 Office Report of i860, "the Red Cedar becomes a prominent tree, cover- 

 ing large tracts, where scarcely any other will grow ; and in the Co- 

 manche, Wasatch, Yellow Stone, and adjoining regions, it becomes over 

 vast districts the only tree growth, and therefore of great importance. 

 On the bluffs of the Platte, Missouri, Canadian and other rivers, it 

 appears with trunks three or four feet thick, which, judging from its slow 

 growth, must be of immense age." The Cedar also thrives in a great 

 variety of soils. These occur only where bluffs, bare rocks, or gravelly 

 land, have stopped the spread of fires, but serve to show that this useful 

 tree might, if protected from them, be made to grow on many parts of 

 the now treeless plains. On the islands of the Platte, thus protected, and 

 in good soil, it attains its highest deveIoi)ment, the dry climate seeming 

 well suited to it. Showing that it requires summer heat rather than mois- 

 ture, we find it growing at the east base of the Rocky mountains, in lat. 

 51°, while along the Atlantic it reaches only to lat. 43° in Maine. 

 North of these limits a low shrubby form takes its place, considered by 

 some identical, and reaching latitude 67*^ on the Mackenzie river." The 

 Deciduous Cypress is limited more in its range northward, but in 

 Southern Illinois grows finely, and within its range grows well on dry 



