432 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



first ones came were still living and seeded down the ground a second 

 time, so that a fairly good stand of trees was finally produced. 



These studies lead us to infer that pines reproduce themselves 

 as forests, generally under exceptional or unusual circumstances, and 

 that that is their natural way of maintaining themselves as species. 

 The young white and Norway pine, especially the latter, cannot en- 

 dure much shade when small, and could not possibly grow up as a 

 thick forest under their own shade or the shade of other trees — yet 

 we nearly always find them in dense groves. The rings tell us the 

 secret. In the long period of 200 to 300 years during which the pines 

 live, the "accident" of fire or wind becomes a certainty — and when 

 a strip of forest is laid low or burned up, the neighboring trees stand 

 ready to scatter the seed far and wide in the wind, and the new 

 growth springs up and flourishes. 



This is nature's method. But nature's methods are so perfectly 

 harmonized that but Httle is needed to throw them out of balance. 

 Nature clears in strips and dashes seed there, and fires are rare and 

 far apart. Man clears over wide areas and fires of his origin sweep 

 repeatedly over his slashings. The young pine spring up even after 

 the second and third fires, but by perseverence the fires finally 

 destroy them all, and what nature intended to be the young pine 

 forest becomes a barren wilderness. 



PROPAGATING NEW VARIETIES OF TREE FRUITS 

 FROM SEED. 



C. L. WATROUS, DES MOINES, IOWA. 

 (.A. talk.) 



I have listened with a great deal of interest to what Mr. Patten 

 has said, and I am not disposed to take issue with anything he has 

 said, because we in Iowa recognize the fact that he understands more 

 about these things than any one of us or all of us put together. If 

 I could say anything here that I thought would be really useful it 

 would be to preach a sort of crusade, as Peter the Hermit did, to Mr. 

 Patten, Mr. Burbank, Mr. Morrill, who has done so much for crabs, 

 and Mr. Williams, who has done so much for plums, who have all 

 started on this fundamental course and brought together different 

 strains of fruit out of which is to come the most promising varieties. 

 What I want to preach is that the work should be taken up by all of 

 us common people, by the pomologists, by the fruit growers general- 

 ly, and my talk will be directed along that line. At the root of this, 

 it seems to me, is the cause of our condition here in the northwest. 



What I want to say will apply to this inland upper Mississippi 



