78 ANNUAL REPORT 



class, always in the majority in Minnesota/who cannot be hum- 

 bugged into planting trees with hearts so frail, and life so transi- 

 tory. All sensible people admit that land owners should plant 

 trees of some description. And I would most respectfully refer the 

 above named class of careful, prudent men, to the tender consider- 

 ation of the artistic works of a "Tree Dealer" who has set up in 

 the grounds of the State House of one of the Carolinas, a Palmetto 

 tree, made of iron. Employ him to set up your fruit trees! They 

 will doubtless cost you a trifle more, but you will have the ever- 

 lasting satisfaction of knoiving that they are strictly Iron Clad. 



A. W. SIAS. 



Mr. Elliot moved that a committee be appointed to confer with 

 the Amber Cane Association in reference to a joint convention. 

 Carried, and Messrs. Elliot, Brimhall and Fuller so appointed. 

 J. T. Grimes read the following : 



REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON EVERGREENS. 



Your Committee on Evergreens cannot urge too forcibly the 

 necessity of their use in adorning our home grounds and making 

 them attractive and pleasant and in protecting our buildings and 

 orchards from the cold sweeping winds of winter and in beautify- 

 ing our lawns and cemeteries, and surrounding, as it were, with 

 immortal green, the homes of both the living and the dead. 



While the deciduous tree casts off her garments at the approach 

 of winter and stretches out her naked arms in helpless solitude and 

 the flowers have been buried beneath the snows of the valley, each 

 seeming to say, Nature now is dead; her obsequies are past and we 

 are known no more: the evergreen, with matchless grace, points 

 high to Heaven, and seems to say, these robes of mine are borrowed 

 from yonder clime, where flowers ever bloom and trees immortal 

 grow. It is said there is a language in the trees, but we shall know 

 little about it unless we commune with them and hear them con- 

 versing together. But I am not called upon for an essay but a 

 report — a report upon evergreens. 



Well, what have we here? An arboretum! Just such a one 

 as we suppose might be growing in the experimental grounds of 

 the State tjniversity. 1 see the Professor has grouped them all in 



