196 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



structures erected by men from materials which had been trau^i^ortea 

 from distant forests at enormous expense. The foresight of Morron. and 

 those who thought with him loolted forward to the time, when the irreat 

 forests should be depleted, and all the attendant evil results th.irefroin 

 would begin to be felt by, not only local communities, but the aatiou at 

 large, and that in the even limited forestization of these plains, ihese 

 things would occur: Rain-fall would increase, rain-fall would i)> con- 

 served and held, soil would be enriched and rich soil protected, while the 

 beautifying of the landscape would follow as the day follows the night. 



In the more than a quarter of a century that I have lived in your 

 midst, I have seen four classes of men who used, for their pleasure or 

 livelihood, Nebraska soil. The first was typified by a man on the plains, 

 year after year, sowing and planting in the spring, reaping in summer 

 and garnering in the fall. I saw no trees about his home or along the 

 borders of his land. I saw the constantly diminishing crops of wheat 

 and corn from year to year and the rank sunflowers waving in the wind 

 while the cockleburr clung tenaciously to the soil. 



Again I saw another, who, within reasonable bounds rotated his 

 crops, and and used now and then scant fertilizer. He gathered what 

 he had sown, but year by year there was a larger impoverishment of the 

 soil and lean years was the prospect for his future. He wrought, as 

 some men live, from hand to mouth. « 



Again I saw a thrifty man, whose crops were rotated with timothy and 

 clover and better than these, with alfalfa. That man was using foresight 

 for at least a decade ahead in sowing the last, and its growth, for a num 

 ber of years. He was restoring the soil to its virgin fatness. 



And I saw another man looking farther into the future and in ad- 

 dition to the sowing of clover, alfalfa, and other legumes, upon the hill- 

 side, in the low and wet places, and along the roadside, he planted trees 

 suitable to the place and their probable use in the generations to come. 

 That man was planting for future generations. He was not only en- 

 riching the legacy and devise to his heirs, but he was enriching the 

 holdings of his neighbors. He was not only looking after the interests 

 of self, but he was blessing and enriching the country present and 

 future. 



Historians agree that the cradle of the race lay eastward and from 

 the southern European seas and that Palestine, Persia, Arabia, and 

 Egypt, were the earliest settled portions of the globe. True, there were 

 early deserts, but the deserts have increased uniformly with the progress 

 of the centuries. We read of the fertile plains and the rich, luxuriant 

 river valleys, along such streams as the .Jordan, the Tigris, the Euphrates 

 and the Nile. We read about the moimtains. clad with forests of 

 which the cedars of Lebanon were the highest type. But man, thinking 

 more of his city than of his country, impoverished the soil and despoiled 

 the forests, so that the shifting sands have broken their former limits, 

 and the vast domain which fed, for centuries, the multitudes of earth. 



