THE PONDEROSA PINE. 221 



and has ever since. It is of a compact, more dwarfish growth than 

 the average. The last trying winter the ponderosa came through 

 without any loss, and they generally show very little discolored 

 foliage in the spring. Five years ago, nineteen four-year old plants 

 were stuck out in the prairie and left without any care whatever, 

 and of these eighteen are now alive, look thrifty and are making a 

 fair growth. 



About the only objection made to the ponderosa is that it is 

 hard to transplant, but my experience with it has been very satis- 

 factory in this respect, rarely losing over fifteen per cent, and often 

 not more than five to ten per cent, and that without shade or water- 

 ing. This, however, applies to trees grown here in our fine mellow 

 soil from the seed, where trees of all kinds push out an abundance 

 of fibrous roots. 



All things considered this is the most promising pine for the 

 plains, where the white pine is not reliable. The Scotch is short 

 lived at best, and leans heavily to the north; the jack pine is hardy 

 and grows rapidly while young, but looks scrubby and inferior be- 

 side the stately ponderosa, with their very long, deep green needles 

 and straight bodies. Here it never has a limb broken by heavy 

 winds, is really pretty and promises to live a hundred years. 



LEGAL PROTECTION FOR THE OWNER OF NEW PRO- 

 DUCTIONS IN HORTICULTURE. 



J M. UNDERWOOD, LAKE CITY. 



When one thinks of the vast amount of time that is spent by 

 our legislators in passing new laws for the government of this great 

 nation, at an expense of millions upon millions of dollars, it would 

 seem that it must be impossible for them to have overlooked a single 

 thing and that there was nothing that needed legal protection that 

 had not been provided for. In the commercial world, protection 

 is given to every one, even to the smallest detail, and in the inventive 

 realm the strong arm of the patent laws guards the rights of the 

 inventor of a new style of tooth-pick or clothes-pin as jealously as 

 the most wonderful of mechanical devices. There is hardly a thing 

 in mechanical improvements to which the public has not been re- 

 quired to pay heavy tribute for a long period of time ; and it may be 

 that the inventor stumbled by mere accident upon the improvement. 

 The products of authors and composers, too, are carefully guarded 

 by our copyright laws, so that "Copyright" or "Trademark" is 

 printed upon every package or article or publication that can in any 

 way bring: to its author a remuneration. 



