100 ' MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



those earlier days there was not even a shrub or flower or any- 

 thing in the way of vegetation. I remarked to a friend the 

 other day that I believed there were more trees growing in 

 Minnesota today than there were ever before. It may not be 

 such large trees, of course, and not so valuable from a commer- 

 cial standpoint, but from the point of number we are actually 

 planting and growing trees so numerously that in number, 

 starting from the little fellow that is large enough to assert 

 itself as a tree, we have more trees than ever before in the his- 

 tory of Minnesotn. 



Mr. C. L. Smith: I notice what Brother Owen says about the num- 

 ber of trees, but I spent this past season considerable time north of 

 here, — and we are now south of the center of Minnesota, and this is 

 a timber country up here.^and one thing I was impressed with was 

 that we do nothing to urge those people who are Hying there and 

 trying to make homes for themselves to save trees around their 

 buildings. Down in Brother Richardson's country, where there 

 were no trees to commence with, they are better sheltered by trees 

 than they are up here in Isanti county where they had to clear off 

 the timber to build their homes. The people are leaving their 

 homes less protected in timber districts than they are on prairies. 

 In Freeborn and Houston counties twenty-nine years ago they 

 planted groves, and they are properly arranged to get the benefit 

 from them, but up here you will notice hundreds of homes on the 

 St. Paul & Duluth road where they have stripped their places of 

 every stick of timber, and they get the full force of the cold winds of 

 winter and the hot suns of summer. The horticultural society 

 should do something to educate these people against the destruc- 

 tion of trees around the home. 



Mr. Seth Kenney: Don't you think the climate will teach those 

 people pretty soon to plant trees there? 



Mr. C. L. Smith: Yes, but it will be too late. They will have 

 destroyed them and must begin over again. 



The President: I took a drive yesterday nine miles southwest of 

 Hastings through a rich part of the prairie country, through a Ger- 

 man settlement, of very well-to-do Germans, and I did not see a 

 single residence that was protected with a shelter belt ef any kind. 

 Some houses were entirely unprotected, not a tree around them. 



Mr. Dartt: What was the reason? 



The President: I do not believe they appreciate that thej^ can 

 have anything better than they have got. What I was most im- 

 pressed with was the necessity and the importance of teaching those 

 people the value of evergreens. They cannot have the same in the 

 western as in the eastern part of the state, but when it so easy to 

 have an evergreen screen around the place it seems to me they 

 ought to be taught how it is possible to have an evergreen shelter 

 to break the cold blasts of winter. Mr. Owen may have seen some- 

 thing in summer when the leaves were on that impressed him, but 

 how is it in winter? You ride across the country on the railroad. 



