A PLEA FOR MORE TREE PLANTING. 385 



the timber from the farms and leave nothing. On the northeast you 

 have the great lakes, and as soon as the timber is all cut off there 

 will be nothing between you and the great lakes. The climate will 

 change here, and the favorable environments you have today will be 

 gone. The timber in the north and northwest will be gone. The fa- 

 vorable conditions that you have for making beautiful homes and 

 pleasant grounds are gone in a large degree. Your society must 

 redouble its efforts to produce trees of different kinds that will 

 withstand the extreme conditions of your climate, because you have 

 forgotten to look forward to protect those forests and to educate 

 the people to maintain the forests. I have been impressed with 

 these facts in traveling over this state somewhat, and I must say 

 I was greatly disappointed. Not very long ago I was in a city of 

 your state not very far from here, in a town of about 6,000 inhab- 

 itants, and I discovered but one single evergreen tree, four 

 or five inches in diameter, and it could not be said that that was a 

 monument for that town. It surprised me very much that the ever- 

 green, that will grow as it grows here, was not more in evidence, 

 or that such a condition should exist, and in listening to these papers 

 recommending your people to adorn their homes the thought im- 

 pressed itself upon my mind that the thing to do was to retain the 

 environments you already have and to improve them, instead of 

 permitting the great forest that you now have to disappear in the 

 manner in which it is now going. I feel this society has a very im- 

 portant work to do in connection with the forestry association. 

 (Applause.) 



CURRANTS AND THEIR TREATMENT IN THE 

 COMMERCIAL GARDEN. 



S. R. SPATES, MARKVILLE. 



A man having a rich and reasonably level piece of land has 

 the battle half fought, and victory an assured fact, but as my land 

 is quite inferior to the above, and as I am asked how I grow cur- 

 rants, I will proceed to unfold the mystery. 



First — My land was ploughed as deep as two good horses could 

 do the work; after which, with a winged shovel plow, I had fur- 

 rowed out deep furrows six feet apart. As this land was grav- 

 elly, in order to obtain a measure of success, I filled the furrows 

 two-thirds full of rich soil and yellow clay — and I go "heavy" on 

 the clay for such conditions. After the above preparation I planted 

 the bushes three and one-half feet apart in the furrows — planting 

 deep and packing down the soil thoroughly. The hardest part of 

 the matter with me was to obtain varieties suitable for the situ- 



