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BEST THREE EVERGREENS FOR SHELTER. 185 
Mr. Hawkinson: This is only for shelter Iam speaking about. 
The President: We are only speaking about the best three for 
shelter. I would put in the Scotch pine. What we want is that you 
name the three best varieties for shelter. 
Mr, Dartt: Yes, I would take the Scotch pine, the Norway spruce, 
and [I am inclined to favor the white spruce next. That makes three, 
I believe. 
Mr. Harris: Mr. President, it is my humble opinion that of all the 
evergreens that can be grown in the northwest the white spruce 
stands at the head. It makes a finer growth than any other of 
our nativeevergreens, itis easy to transplant, and it makes a dense 
handsome tree if you give itachance. The Norway spruce makes a 
more rapid growth, but when we get a hot day that tree loses its foli- 
age to agreatextent. Therefore, I place the white spruce at the head 
and front for windbreaks, shelter belts and for a large proportion of 
groves also. Next I would place the white pine (Pinus strobus); it 
is one of our finest trees, and in the end when it has come to matur- 
ity itis the most profitable tree we have in Minnesota. It seems to 
be easy to transplant, and after it gets to a little size, (it is easy to 
manage) we do not have to plant it close to get a good windbreak; 
we soon get an excellent windbreak. If you plant them in rows,you 
want them about thirty feet apart. Next to the white pine I would 
place the Scotch pine. It stands the high wind well. These three 
trees, in my opinion, are much better than the trees named. This 
red cedar will grow in very poor places, and if you once get it estab- 
lished it will do well; however, it will take a great while before it 
amounts to much as a windbreak or as ashelter. The red cedar 
under such conditions is very slow growing, yet if it is planted on 
rich land, such as we should plant a great many of our trees in, it 
is not as hardy as we supposed it to be. A year, yes, years ago, dur- 
ing one of those winters that did so much damage, when the ex- 
treme cold reached down through portions of Illinois, Indiana and 
Ohio, in territory where red cedar had been planted, it destroyed a 
large portion of them. 
Mr. C.L. Smith: You know it has been a hobby with me for a 
great many years that our Minnesota evergreens were better than 
any others. Mr. Hawkinson should have said northern red cedar. 
We can always get seed and young trees cheap from the south and 
southwest, but red cedar grown from Minnesota seed and gathered 
in the woods of Minnesota is expensive, and with them as with a 
great many other things, the people would rather get more trees for 
less money, so they are not inclined to plant northern trees. There 
are hundreds of plantations made in Minnesota of red cedar, par- 
ticularly where the red cedar grows so thriftily, and wherever those 
red cedars have been planted they have been entirely successful. I 
hold that the three best evergreens for shelter belts in Minnesota, 
the three that can be planted with the greatest certainty of having 
good, live, healthy trees twenty-five to thirty years after planting, 
_ are the Minnesota white spruce, not the white spruce from Illinois, 
Michigan or somewhere else, but the Minnesota white spruce, the 
red cedar, the Minnesota red cedar, and the white cedar grown in 
