152 ANNUAL BEPORT 



the white piue. It does not start quite as rapidly in growth as the 

 Scotch piue, but it soon passes it and makes a clean, majestic looking 

 tree. For the windy, western part of the State the white spruce, bal- 

 sam fir, white pine and red cedar are about all that are desirable. 



I have a row of white spruce, natives of the State, trausplanted from 

 the forest in 1873, and two years later into the row where they now 

 stand twenty-five to twenty-eight feet high — a dense mass of foliage 

 and limbs from the ground up. A high board fence could hardly do 

 better to keep out wind and snow. This tree does not grow quite as 

 fast as the Norway spruce, but is very much hardier and better for a 

 windbreak over the greatest portion of the State. 



For a compact, dense windbreak to surround a building spot or 

 barn and stock yard, there is nothing so good as two rows of our own 

 native white spruce. Set in the row five feet apart and the rows ten 

 feet apart, set so as to break joints. Suppose every farmer in the 

 northwest would take a piece of land eight rods east and west by ten 

 rods north and south and surround it with such a windbreak. If well 

 cared for, in a few years it would be twenty feet high, when with a 

 board fence inside to keep stock away from the trees, would make it 

 so protected inside that, let the tempest howl and wind blow hard as 

 it would outside, cattle and horses would at all times be comfortable 

 so far as windbreaks could make them. Then what an ornament to 

 the farm. No money could buy it from the owner. What a saving 

 in feed. In how much better condition the stock, and if the stock 

 prospers well the owner would. 



Now we see in the older parts of the State fine barns with warm 

 basements for the stock through the night. In the morning, fre- 

 quently about sunrise, the very coldest time in the whole twenty-four 

 hours, they are turned out into a yard protected by a windbreak of 

 barbed wires. Of course where there is room for more than two rows 

 I would advise the planting of more, for I yield the palm to no one as 

 being more enthusia«;tic than myself on the subject of evergreens and 

 the preservation and restoration of our native pine lands. I would 

 like to see from two to five acres of evergreens around every farmer's 

 home, as I once stated in a previous article on this subject. 



BEAUTY AND UTILITY. 



If a thing of beaut}'^ is a joy forever, and gladens the heart of its 

 possessor continually, of how much greater worth to the appreciative 

 mind of man must it be, at the same time while imparting perpetual 

 joy to its owner, it likewise contributes directly or indirectly to his 



