EVERGREENS. 217 



well in the Sand Hills, and the man who furnished the first lot 

 is yet in the business. He keeps a large nursery of them, and 

 also has great success in collecting and handling. Among a 

 dozen kinds the Jack pine will lead everything in growth. 



For twenty years I have been raising the Chinese Arborvitae. 

 Mr. Douglas, the father of the evergreen business, advised me 

 to go into this. In the main they have been thrifty and hardy. 

 Last winter I wrote them up, and before the ink was dry, there 

 came that death wave, so fatal to many of our choice trees, and 

 nipped there heads. Well, they stood it as well as the Scotch 

 pines and the Red Cedars. I have one now growing just where 

 it came up in the seed bed. It has grown six years, and is now 

 a beautiful and shapely tree nine feet high. If any one ever 

 knew an evergreeen to grow one and a half feet a year right in 

 the spot where it came up, let us know it. I have been raising 

 evergreens a good many years and never saw anything like this 

 before. These trees are exceedingly beautiful in the summer. 

 They have a system of fans which converge toward the center, 

 and the tree is of pyramidal form, and is very fine. In winter, 

 like the Platte Cedar, they turn brown. Did I say Platte Cedar? 

 Forgive me. We are all saddened when we think of a good man 

 w^ho has borne a good reputation and then goes wrong, and 

 spoils aU the good of a life time. The Red Cedar, like the In- 

 dian, was all right when wild, but don't seem to stand civiliza- 

 tion. How all these years we have praised him, recommended 

 him and endorsed him, and what zest was awakened in the prop- 

 agation, and as soon as we found out, we did not want to know 

 any more. How terribly they went back on us. There was 

 good Brother Bruning who invented the process of having them 

 <iome up a year ahead of schedule time. He had them by the 

 million, and they all went back on him. The blight wiped out 

 thirty thousand dollars in two years. They could not stick to 

 their own sphere. Their business was just to grow and make 

 good fence posts, and bear seeds. But they got ambitious and 

 wanted to raise oranges. Looking at them at a distance you 

 would say they were succeeding, but a near inspection showed 

 they were frauds. They and the apple trees had been playing 

 shuttle cock — acting and »e-acting on each other. Well, the up- 

 shot is that Mr. Platte has lost his reputation altogether, and it 



