56 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



People often make this mistake. A man in northern Ne- 

 braska wishes to plant a lot of red cedar. He finds those 

 raised in southern Illinois quoted at about half the price of 

 the Platte Cedar grown nearer home. He gets a few 

 thousand. They may do well for a year or two and then a 

 hard winter knocks them all out. Another wants to plant 

 some White Spruce. He hears that imported ones can be 

 had cheap and he buys some. They prove to be worthless. 

 Then he gets some from seed grown in Maine or New Hamp- 

 shire and they are short-lived. He has some from northern 

 Minnesota and Wisconsin and they do fairly well. There 

 is a belt of White Spruce which lies along our northern 

 states and swings down into the Black Hills into a climate 

 somewhat analogous to our own. He gets this variety and 

 they hit the spot completely. There are portions of eastern 

 Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas where Norway Spruce 

 and White Pine will grow if seed is secured from the nearest 

 northwestern belt, but you try them with Scotch Pine, White 

 and Black Spruce two hundred miles further west and they 

 are a failure. 



Inexperts recommend Scotch Pine for western Kansas and 

 Nebraska. We who have watched things for thirty-five years, 

 meeting with bitter experience, know bettter. We have seen 

 groves of them in the Republican Valley going down under 

 the sirocco. They can not live. Don't try to make an ever- 

 green with soft foliage live under the 100th Meridian. 



HERE IS THE SITUATION. 



In the West we have the wet and dry cycles which may last 

 for five or six years each. During the wet period, the plains 

 fill up with people and the success of dry farming is heralded 

 far and wide. The people move in with great hope. Trees 

 adapted to conditions farther east are planted and do well 

 for a time. Then comes the dry cycle with the fierce hot 

 ■udnds. White Willow, Soft Maple, Boxelders, Scotch Pines, 

 White Pines, and Norway, White, and Black Spruces go down 



