44 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Here and there, miles apart, beside the streams, sheltered among the timber, 

 was one of the very first settlers. A few had just stopped at some one of the 

 groves that nature had scattered with a sparing hand, mere dots in the prairie 8ea» 

 between the narrow skirts of timber where the trees held their footing along the 

 streams. 



The wild game was scarcely disturbed, and that spring the wilderness rani^ 

 with the shrieking of thousands of wolves and the strange booming noise of mil- 

 lions of prairie chickens. 



Along the lines of travel were well-worn roads, with a few small bridges, a 

 few ferries, and many fords. The foundation was here, but the building of civiliza- 

 tion was scarcely dreamed of. The advance guard, the first only of the pioneers, 

 were viewing the land. It was discovered but only partly explored. 



To-day, 1892. no better, no really higher state of human existence can be found 

 in any region of all our grand and proud Republic, than is in adjacent parts of four 

 states, two of them west of the Missouri river, one east of it, and one through 

 which it runs. 



In all that has made the present better than it was thirty-nine years ago, the 

 trees planted by the hand of man have been a very significant factor. 



They surround and protect the country homes, and the farm animals go under 

 them to find shade in summer and shelter in winter. Some of the villages have 

 become groves where the winter gales lose much of their dreaded power, and 

 where the fierceness of the summer heat is tempered by the leaves that shield us 

 from the sun. There nestle the gardens, the shrubbery and the flowers. The 

 fruits of the latitude are plenty in nearly every house, and the beauty is over all. 



We have now the experience from the first with the native trees, and with 

 evergreens for thirty-three years. Ijct us put each variety on trial and hear the 

 evidence : shelter, shade, timber and beauty ; let us to the record of already more 

 than the lifetime of a generation, and learn much as to what we and our children 

 should plant hereafter. 



It is a present question. Another spring will soon be here. 



In the spring of 1859 my father brought down the Illinois river and up the 

 Missouri a large lot of fruit trees, a choice selection of ornamental trees and 

 shrubbery and an extensive venture in evergreens. The handling of evergreen* 

 was then an experiment. They were costly. Many lacked faith in their success 

 on the prairie, but other many with eyes for beauty and with hope of their useful- 

 ness, willing to pay the price, to do the work and to wait for results, bought and 

 planted. That importation of 1859 was distributed to the homes of men of taste 

 and carefulness, here a few and there a few, fifty miles around our nursery place. 



We ourselves planted on our own places groves of them. These groves and 

 the evergreens that are by and around hundreds of homes are object-lessons that 

 may be seen afar off and carefully studied near at hand. He that passes may read, 

 he that feels their protection when the blizzard is abroad will ponder, and he that 

 enjoys their shade in the summer will mentally digest. 



Many farmers here have for fifteen or even twenty years taken their whole 

 supply of fuel from their own places. Ask some man wh(» has a hundred hogs, fifty 

 head of cattle and a dozen or twenty horses, what he would take for his grove of 

 soft maples, burr-oaks, elms, or of varieties mixed. Or. better still, if he has a 

 goodly lot of evergreens where his stock can run under them, ask him to set a price 

 on that. Ask his neighbor who has that wind-break, planted a dozen years ago, 

 what he will take to let you cut it down. 



