SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 513 



The Doctor said he had not seen a plantation in Europe or America that would 

 compare with it. The owner told us that he had sent down to South Indiana, 

 and had the seeds collected in the woods, and was growing them for fence 

 posts, as he found that oak posts rotted. We went home with Mr. Bryant, and 

 then went through Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, wherever we could learn that 

 the trees were growing. I left Dr. Warder in Nebraska, he goiug to Wyoming 

 and through Kansas and Missouri, studying these two trees. I found the East- 

 ern kind showing the effect of severe winters. I met Mr. Barney by appoint- 

 ment in Chicago, the week after I left Dr. AVarder. He told me how he 

 labored to introduce this tree, and the importance he attached to it, and I had 

 previously learned from Dr. Warder how Mr. Barney had spent both time and 

 money lavishly without any pecuniary interest in it. 



I started the next week, with one of my sons, for South Indiana, Western 

 Kentucky, etc. We explored the woods. We hired Germans, Irishmen, poor 

 whites, and negroes, and saw the seeds taken from the native trees. We 

 remained as long as we could possibly endure the hardship, and then grew the 

 trees by the millions, advertising them as hardy up to forty-two degrees north 

 latitude. About three years ago, finding them hardy further north, we adver- 

 tised them hardy up to forty-three degrees. When I was East last summer 

 two letters followed me with an article clipped from the New York Sun, telling 

 how Western men were flooding the West with this tree, which is not hardy. 

 I confess I was annoyed, as both these letters were from Eastern men, express- 

 ing sympathy with the poor, unfortunate West, and kindly sending me a copy 

 of the article. 



Many of our Eastern friends do not understand the West. The East proper, 

 covering only a limited space set among hills «and cities, and lakes and rivers, 

 and adjoining the seaboard, is all nearly alike, and what is hardy in one part 

 of it is comparatively hardy in all. Not so in the West; and this is why they 

 make what seems to us most glaring mistakes. It might be said that there is 

 no tree hardy in the West! True, there are a few species, notably the red 

 cedar, the box elder, and the black cherry, which grow from Florida far up into 

 the Northwest ; the two first named up into Northern Montana and beyond. 

 But do any of our Eastern friends think that seeds of these trees collected in 

 Florida would produce trees that would be hardy here? Let us not be severe 

 on them if they do. I had lived a quarter of a century in the West before I 

 knew to the contrary. I made the first discovery when I purchased ten bushels 

 of red cedar berries from the South. They germinated freely, and exceeded 

 our Northern seedlings in growth, but killed back in the winter. I sold them 

 at hall price to a nurseryman that had a Southern trade ; but when we shipped 

 them at three years old, they showed so badly that we sent them to him only 

 charging him for the boxes. Another case out of several I will mention. 

 We bought a large lot of black-walnuts, grown at Makanda, in our own State. 

 They were planted side by side with a lot collected in our own locality. In 

 the autumn, standing side by side, the Makanda seedlings were double the 

 size of ours. The next spring ours were alive to the terminal buds; the 

 Makanda plants were killed to the ground. 



Mr. Josiah Hoopes will not admit that there are two species of catalpa. 

 Mr. Fuller says, in his work on forestry, that the question whether our 

 Western tree is a species may well be left for scientists to decide. Surely 

 Mr. Fuller must know that it has been decided by a scientist who stands|in 

 the front rank both in this country and in Europe: Dr. George Engelmann, 



65 



