ECONOMIC VALUE OF SHELTER BELTS. 99 



tneasare its still greater worth, if possible, in the summer? When 

 the attempt is made to conquer or raid the home with hosts of fire 

 instead of frost, when blighting winds would do the work that those 

 of ice failed to do, when the blistering heat of a northern summer 

 sun supplements the work of the couriers of fire it sent ahead, and 

 when each evil influence is thwarted by our soldier trees in their 

 mailed coats of living green, who will think of saying that those 

 soldiers are worth a given number of dollars and cents, or that their 

 true value can be stated in gold or silver, or any other of the world's 

 materialistic dross? Can a price be put upon the cool, refreshing 

 shade that all animals, human and brute, luxuriate in? Can we con 

 by rote, translate, put into books and sell for money the language 

 and the music of the trees as their leaves are played upon by pass- 

 ing breezes? Yet who that has once communed with trees, or who 

 that has been lulled to sweet slumber and pleasant dreams by the soft 

 lullaby of rustling leaves as they coquetted with the night wind, 

 would name the price that would induce him to part with such 

 associates and to be deprived of such blessed communion ? The 

 true economic value of the windbreak or shelter belt must be stated 

 in terms understood by the heart and not by the purse. It must be 

 told in the currency that passes at the throne of God, that is coined 

 of the highest sentiments, the best parts and the purest aspirations 

 of man. 



It would be as easy to give the economic value of the mother's 

 love for her baby, of her tenderness and solicitude, as of the trees 

 around the home. But in this very value of trees lies the strongest 

 inducement for their planting. Let us learn and let us teach the 

 true, the real, the indescribable and unmeasurable value of trees, 

 and we will have done our best to increase their number, profit our- 

 selves in the noblest way, and most surely bless those who are to 

 come after us. 



The President: I would like to ask Mr. Owen what percent 

 of homes he thinks there are on the prairies and in Minnesota 

 that are sharing all the blessings that he has pictured. 



Mr. Owen: During the past fall I traveled in Minnesota a 

 good deal. I traveled probably three or four hundred miles 

 across the prairie in private conveyances, and while I shall not 

 endeavor to give the percentage of homes I saw destitute and un- 

 protected by trees, I was cheered everywhere I went, at almost 

 every hour of my travels, and also in my rides by rail, by the evi- 

 dence of the rapidly increasing number of tree protected homes in 

 Minnesota. I remarked to the companion I was traveling with 

 that some of the most attractive places I saw were, I remem- 

 bered, prairie homes where ten or twelve years ago, or when 

 I was a very fresh resident of the state, there was an entire 

 absence of tree protection, and even within these few years I 

 noticed the trees had grown up in sufficient number and of 

 sufficient size to form a most excellent protection, where in 



