148 ANNUAL REPORT 



found a market for their entire stock each year. I am also well satisfied 

 that planting and cultivation is being carried on more intelligently 

 than in the past. 



In looking over the cellars anl packing sheds of promineat dealers, 

 I find them exercising more than ordinary care in storing and handling 

 stock, with an evident desire to get the stock to the planter in the 

 best possible condition. Such a method of business is worthy of com - 

 mendatioil, but 1 am sorry to say that in some cases there was 

 evident carelessness in handling stock, a disregard of the inter- 

 ests of the planter that should be classed with highway robbery. 

 Evergreens, young tree seedlings, berry plants, etc., stored in compact 

 masses, until heating, fermentation, moM or rot had destroyed a con- 

 siderable portion; exposure for hours to the direct rays of the sun and 

 to drying winds without protection of any kind, still further injured 

 them. They are sometimes packed in bundles with very slight cov- 

 ering, or in boxes with moldy straw, and are dead or dying before 

 they leave the nursery. We cannot too severely censure such meth- 

 ods, which rob a man of his money, and destroy his interest in tre& 

 planting. 



Again, when the dealer had faithfully performed his duty and the 

 trees reached the point of delivery, they were destroyed through the 

 carelessness of the planter. Think of trees laying in a wagon box in 

 front of a saloon or grocery store for half a day, Vithout so much as 

 a blanket or sack to shelter them from the sun and wind; then car- 

 ried home, left in the wagon over night, or thrown on the ground and 

 left to be carelessly planted the next day, where they carry on a losing 

 battle with weeds and drouth, till they give up what little life is left 

 them. 



The intelligent and practical information gathered and distributed 

 by the Horticultural Society, the Forestry Association, our able agri- 

 cultural press and the Farmers Institutes have borne fruit; and 

 good seed has been sown which has not yet germinated. We are cer- 

 tainly improving, many planters are eminently successful, but the 

 field is large, failures are yet too common, our forests are disappear- 

 ing too rapidly, and farmers do not sufficiently appreciate the ad- 

 vantages of timber. 



One careful farmer who has a grove of 1,000 Scotch pines, mixed 

 with deciduous trees to the north and west of his farm buildings, now 

 sixteen years old, and which cost originally $10, claimed that they 

 had saved in the item of feed alone over $100 per year for the past 

 eight years. He keeps an average of one hundred head of stock. Anyone 



