166 ANinjAL EEPORT. 



curry comb? The horse is a beautiful animal, and a tree is a beauti- 

 ful object, but it is hardly safe to say that one horse or one tree is as 

 good as another, though practically this is what such dealing 

 amounts to. 



MI]SrJ!irEAPOLIS METHODS. 



As a contrast to this, and as an example what good work may ac- 

 complish, I may point to the trees in our parks, which have been 

 planted and cared for by the superintendent, Mr. Berry, a man with 

 whose success as a tree planter I had been for many years familiar in 

 Chicago that I felt as if I had secured a prize for Minneapolis when I 

 found that his services were to be had, and introduced him to the 

 park commissioners. 



Not three per cent of the trees he has planted have failed to live 

 and make such healthy and vigorous growth that already, in two 

 years' time, the groups in the parks are crowding each other, and we 

 are thinning them by removing individual trees to other points, each 

 group serving as a nursery to furnish a supply for further planting, 

 while those on the street, — as witness the Hennepin avenue boule- 

 vard, — already furnish extended lines of luxuriant foliage. But no 

 cheap, inefficient work could secure such results. These trees were 

 procured from a responsible nurseryman, who cares for his trees as he 

 would for living animals. They were packed and transpoi ted with 

 careful provision for guarding the roots from exposure to sun and 

 wind. They were planted in excavations large enough to admit a 

 liberal supply of rich earth, in which every root was carefully spread 

 out by hand, with fine mould worked in among their tender fibres*; 

 they were well watered and thoroughly mulched, and all through the 

 first and second season after planting they have oeen liberally sup- 

 plied with wat«r, — not in driblets of a pailful each, but with thor- 

 ough drenchings from a watering cart at intervals sufficiently fre- 

 quent to prevent their suffering from drouth. The life of a tree is 

 measured by centuries. It is in swaddling clothes at the age of five 

 or ten years, and must be nursed with the tend*^i-nes8 which all babies 

 require. 



Anyone who expects satisfactory growth with less careful attending 

 than this will be disappointed. A tree is a vegetable production with 

 no more power to take care of itself than a cabbage. What should 

 we think of a farmer who planted and cultivated his crops in the 

 slovenly way that trees are often treated? W. . d he not deserve the 



