OUR UNUSED CAPITAL. 37I 



you have in your own borders. Just think with these two kinds 

 of pines what you could do with your farms ! 



Lumber is getting high ; so plant evergreen barns. Surround 

 one-fourth of an acre with two rows of pines, and you will find 

 your barn growing, putting on siding and shingles itself, and 

 it will be far better than the shelter of a barbed wire fence we 

 use down our way. Some of you have stony places or hilly por- 

 tions on the farm that don't bring you in a cent. Plant these to 

 pines. Have your evergreen barns, shelter hills and groves, 

 and so move your grand state about 300 miles south and dodge 

 the rigors of your awful winters. Have shelters everywhere, 

 and you can raise many things you cannot now. And when 

 Old Boreas comes along with that stinging lash of the north 

 wind, he will be discouraged trying to find you. 



Have a plenty of ornamental shrubs ! Last summer in a 

 Boston park I saw 150 kinds of lilacs growing. I am poor — ^I 

 only keep fifty kinds — but they are marvelous in their forms and 

 foliage, with a success of bloom reaching down to the first of 

 July. You can propagate them if you know how. Get a good 

 collection and go to raising them from seed. At Brandon, Mani- 

 toba, I saw a fine lilac hedge. I asked Mr. Bedford what kind 

 they were. "Chas. the loth." "But," said I, "they vary." "Yes," 

 was the reply, "I raised them from seed." And he had some very 

 fine ones of a new type. Visiting a nurseryman in Massachu- 

 setts last summer I noticed a fine lot of Villosa, June blooming 

 lilacs. I asked the proprietor why they varied so much. "I 

 raised them from seed," was the reply. Grown near the 

 Bretschneider, the Emodi, and some other broad-leaved ones, 

 all late bloomers, you are bound to get new kinds. I am experi- 

 menting along' this line. Why, there is a wonderful field open- 

 ing all around you. Why not enter in? You can propagate by 

 grafting just as the nurseryman grafts his yearling apples. A 

 piece of scion and piece of root, the lip graft and a waxed thread. 

 You can graft 500 or 1,000 a day. 



Did you know there were two distinct kinds of roots on the 

 common lilac? Here are the laterals. How they sprout! I 

 think they lay awake nights to sprout. You can graft on these, 

 and they will keep on sprouting. They are soft and full of pith. 

 The tap root system is hard and can't sprout. Graft on these, 

 and you are all right. Or graft on the Persian and Rouen family 

 — they do not sprout. The lilacs take readily on roots of the vulgaris 

 or Persian. 



