PLANTING PERENNIALS. 159 



Our station has one of the finest peony collections on earth, and added 

 to this we have about 50,000 seedlings on the way, and every year we 

 are adding things of merit. Our new peony, Sunbeam, seems to equal 

 any of the choice imported ones. Very soon our new plants will unfold 

 surprises of loveliness. We were the first on earth to publish a peony 

 manual. 



The first edition of 2,000 is exhausted and we have a new edition 

 now in press. No sooner was the first published than we commenced 

 gathering material for the present edition, which has been almost en- 

 tirely rewritten. 



From our station was also issued the first phlox manual, and we found 

 the key by which to originate new kinds of rare beauty, and we have 

 developed many fine new sorts. 



We want a nev/ race for the west. Many which will do well in the 

 moister air of the east cannot endure the drying winds and hot suns of 

 Nebraska, so we want flowers that will be hardy, with full and sym- 

 metrical crowns, with superior beauty, those that will multiply rapidly 

 and will be adapted every way to our western conditions. Our Diana 

 is a rich, large pink, continues a long time in bloom, endures the heat 

 and multiplies so fast we have commenced selling them. 



There is a great differences in phloxes. Some seem never to have 

 studied the multiplication table. They do not increase. You give them 

 good cultivation, but instead of half a dozen stems you have only one, 

 and from a commercial point of view that does not pay. We have de- 

 veloped some fine sorts which give us six to nine divisions in a year. 



The whole process of reproduction is given in the phlox manual. 



' IN THE MATTER OP EVERGREENS 



We have struck it rich, especially with the Bull or Ponderosa pine. 

 That sturdy, rugged tree resents any coddling. For years I tried to raise 

 it under screen like other evergreens. It was all wrong; you want to 

 raise them out in the open. You can raise them as easily as you please. 

 Any boy or girl, man or woman can raise them for just the cost of the 

 seed. To those who wish we will give the whole process in detail. 



SOME NEW THINGS. 



In Minnesota we heard of the Norway poplar (Populus nigra). We 

 got some cuttings. We were not much impressed with them the first 

 year, but the next they made a tremendous growth. This year it was 

 very dry and yet we had some grow ten feet from cuttings the size of 

 a lead pencil. In Minnesota they have a record of seventeen inches 

 through and fifty-five feet high in fifteen years. We have named it the 

 "sudden sawlog." It promises to be to the north what the Eucalyptus 

 is for the south. Some v/ho received cuttings last year claim they were 

 cheated, that they were only the Carolina poplar. They do resemble 

 them the first year. But there is a difference. The Carolina is the 



