1885.] AMERICAN THOUGHT AND ACTION. 



of trees are a good many, and all these planted in eight years ! 

 But \XQ know of one firm that has planted during five years 

 2,720,000 timber trees in a single county of Kansas, aside from the 

 millions they have grown and sold elsewhere. 



"It may be added that not only did this single firm furnish all 

 these trees and take the contract to plant them, but agreed to care 

 for them and deliver them over standing six feet high and four feet 

 apart, established, shading the ground and able to take care of them- 

 selves. We are not doing as much work in sylviculture as our 

 rapidly vanishing forests warn us tliat we should do, but we are 

 doing a great deal, and doing it well. This plan of contracting to 

 care for the young forest seedlings during tlieir critical early years, 

 and delivering them only when they have become lusty saplings, 

 capable of maintaining themselves, is an American novelty. 

 Persons desiring to make forest plantations on a large scale, can in 

 this way insure themselves against loss by a guarantee that their 

 young stock will have the most intelligent care when such care is 

 most needed." 



NATIVE EVEKGEEEXS. 



At a recent meeting of the Mississippi Valley Society, held in 

 connection with the !N"ew Orleans Exhibition, the growing of ever- 

 greens indigenous to America for wind-breaks around the prairie 

 dwellings was insisted on. L. B. Pierce, in passing from Ohio to 

 Kansas City, did not see a single home provided with any artificial 

 or complete protection from the prevailing winds. Yet the Kansas 

 farmer uses corn to feed his kitchen stove ; for as it is there so 

 cheap that it will not buy its equivalent in coal, he is justified in 

 so using it. Over the West, thousands of bushels are being con- 

 sumed for the production of lieat. The actual expense to the city 

 of New Orleans by a cold northern wind lasting but a short time 

 must amount in the aggregate to a very large sum of money, much 

 of which would be saved by the planting of wind-breaks on the 

 prairie. Beyond Kansas City, in Kansas and Nebraska, wind- 

 breaks are quite common, but they^are all of deciduous trees. Now 

 the evergreens are nature's beautiful winter garments ; and the 

 winter protection afforded by the two kinds may be compared to 

 that given by gauze and flannel. Then wliy this extensive plant- 

 ing of foreign evergreens, when no country in the world possesses 

 so many beautiful indigenous ones as the United States. Thus the 

 red pine of Northern Michigan is for the first twenty years at least 

 the most beautiful of American pines, and deserves a trial in 

 the Western States. 



