STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 53 



five feet hij^h, but had cost the nurseryman fi\e dollars to grow it," and 

 no one gainsaycd it. We now find that if it is planted so as to be 

 sheltered from prevailing winds, it grows finely. 



No ^vondcr a casual obsci-\cr would be discouraged and say, "If the 

 hemlock, that will grow north of the limits of civilization will w^inter-kill 

 on our prairies, nature surely never intended them as a place on which 

 to grow evergreens." 



But the true admirer of this one of oiu" most beautiful native ever- 

 greens would not give it up without first going to see nature and learn 

 her mode of treatment, and was well rewarded for his trouble, for he 

 there found out the whole secret. 



Nature, knowing that the young hemlocks could not bear the parching 

 winds, had \aried from her general rule, and left the dead leaves on the 

 young beech trees to protect them ; and she seems to take pains to always 

 sow the hemlock seeds among the beeches. We see by such cases as 

 this that the man who first used "nurse trees" in his "pinetum" to pro- 

 tect the tender kinds while young, was not entitled to a patent; nature 

 had practiced it before him, and it will continue to be practiced on your 

 beautiful prairies, till these six " desirable and reliable varieties " have 

 increased to sixty. 



It is practiced already more extcnsi\ely than some of you are aware 

 of. Go to Arthur Bryant's, at Princeton, and see the kinds called tender, 

 and the azaleas, the kalmias, the box, the holly ; see his catalpas, large as 

 forest ti'ees — one on his lawn two feet in diameter, and loaded with 

 flowers last June — all sheltered by these "nurse ti-ees." Go to Lamoille. 

 Samuel Etlwards will show you more. He reports evergreens hardy 

 with him, in the shelter of his larger trees, that have been pronounced 

 tender at Philadelphia; and there are numbers of evergreens and other 

 plants at both these places, and several others in diflerent counties in our 

 State, that can not be grown two hundred miles further south without the 

 protection of larger evergreens, and many kinds that we tested several 

 years ago, and could not carrv through an ordinary winter, are now 

 grown successfully by simply planting them on the sheltered side of the 

 hardier sorts; and it well repays the planter, for it is a beautiful sight to 

 see a feathery spruce, or towering pine, battling against the blast, and 

 extending and waving its broad arms, as if intent on protecting the ten- 

 der yew, or drooping cypress. We can not expect to be very successful 

 with our fruit trees, while we are subject to drouths and tornadoes, and 

 we shall be subject to them till we have the right proportion of timber as 

 compared with culli\ated land. 



If seventeen per cent, is the lowest estimate for France, and twenty- 

 three for Germany to give the best results for fruit growing and farming, 

 how is it with us in Illinois ? They have more protection, aside from 

 timber, than we have — a hilly country, more or less, and to some extent 

 bounded by the ocean, while we have a country comparatively level. 

 Our prevailing winds pass over a parched desert, and we are far from the 

 ocean, or any large body of water, except on the east, and have very 

 little east wind in the growing season. 



