TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 217 



increased in size so much afterward that the last picking was better than 

 the first. The berries were watered during two weeks. Next year an 

 earlier beginning will be made, should the season require it. 



The cost of operating the plant was found to be but $2.40 per day. 



The owners of this plant were so well pleased with the results of its 

 operation that they will extend it another year. Their peaches, which 

 must certainly have been very small, in the light soil, were as large as 

 in favorable years, were more highly colored, and in quality left nothing 

 to be desired, according to their kind. 



SHADE TREES. 



BY MR. GEO. B. HORTON OF FRUIT RIDGE. 



''A place for everything and everything in its place," is the maxim of 

 the good housekeeper and the successful farmer. In fact, this principle 

 is at the bottom of all successful operations. Shade trees give protection 

 from the hot suns of summer and the cold blasts of winter; they please 

 the eye, they gratify and refine the tastes, and they ornament the fields, 

 the lawns, the parks, and the roadsides. To make them useful and 

 pleasant to the fullest extent, their location must be carefully studied 

 and their care adapted to the needs of each. 



Dame Nature, in her profuse decoration of the earth's surface, does not 

 to the casual observer seem to follow the rules of order very much; but 

 if you study, and learn to understand her ways, you discover a kind 

 of careless adaptability of everything to the place it occupies, that is 

 really charming. Every tree, shrub, and flower seems to be perfectly 

 located, and surrounded in a way to give the best effect. Who has not 

 peered out from the car window, when riding along through rustic 

 parts of the country, and noted, as the ever-changing panoramic views 

 flashed across his vision, how appropriately the trees skirted the brows of 

 the hills, while others stood guard along the winding streams, and the 

 foliage was all so beautifully blended? The little evergreens and vines 

 cling to the creviced rocks, and so gracefully hang as if to hide from 

 view the source of the little rill of water that courses down. How we 

 would all like to roam through woods, over hills, and along streams 

 where the despoiler, man, has never trod, aiid witness for once the 

 unbroken works of nature! Man destroys and then attempts to replace 

 and rebuild, but he always falls far short of the original. Genius is lack- 

 ing and life is too short. He can not, however, do better in all his 

 efforts at ornamentation with trees than to study and carefully observe 

 nature's ways, in their location, and then let time and nature do the 

 perfecting part. It takes many years after planting to secure a perfect 

 effect with trees, for some of them should be sufficiently large that the 

 buildings may be seen through under the lower branches for best effect. 



What a ruthless destroyer is man, to cut down a fine shade tree from 

 the roadside or garden, that he may raise a few more hills of corn! The 

 only blame I lay at the feet of the pioneer is that he did not anticipate the 

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