MINNESOTA AT THE AMERICAN POMOLQGICAL SOCIETY. 423 



on rocky, stony hillsides which have often been neglected as of no 

 value for orcharding. 



The program was so arranged as to bring out much information 

 and instruction in the highest art of pomology. There was always 

 the greatest interest manifested in all discussions, and the sessions 

 seemed often too short for all who wished to express a thought 

 on the subject under discussion. 



All in all it was a most enjoyable meeting and worthy of that 

 grand old society, founded in 1848 by men with broad ideas and 

 any amount of push and energy. 



THE RESULTS OF SHELTER BELTS ON PRODUC- 

 TIVENESS. 



GEO. H. WHITING, YANKTON, S. D. 



In treating this subject I shall not try to elaborate but will go 

 right into the facts in a common every-day sort of a way, as I have 

 noticed them in South Dakota in the past twenty-three years that 

 I have lived there and hustled for a liveUhood. I was always firm 

 in the belief that to secure best results in the way of productiveness 

 in our prairie state it would be necessary to turn our attention 

 to shelter belts to a considerable extent ; so far at least as to have 

 our gardens and small fruit plats surrounded with belts of trees, and 

 our orchards, at least on the south and zi'est sides, allowing the 

 west belt to extend a little farther north than the orchard does, so 

 as to protect it from the northwest storms that are so prevalent and 

 severe during the rainy season in summer. The writer is satisfied 

 from observations and experience that to this extent at least it will 

 pox, and, further, I believe that shelter belts will be a good invest- 

 ment so far as to protect all crops from the winds. It is an old and 

 common saying that if one-fourth of our land in a farming country 

 were planted and kept in trees in the shape of shelter belts that the 

 remaining three-fourths would produce more than would the whole 

 without the trees. I have often felt like stating that if we would 

 increase the amount of trees to one-third or even one-half that the 

 saying would still hold good. 



^ When the writer first entered Dakota, in the spring of 1879 

 (then a territory), coming from Minnesota via Nebraska and cross- 

 ing the Missouri river at Yankton and traveling across the prairie 

 in an emigrant wagon in a northeasterly direction to Sioux Falls, 

 we found the country as nature had left it, with the exception of 

 an occasional claim shack (mostly sod structures) and a few strips 

 of newly turned sod. Nature had not dared to plant or, at least, 



