394 ANNUAL REPOET 



Did you ever attempt to raise strawberries extensively on the open 

 prairie? After a good enrichment of manure and cultivation, they 

 branch out strong and prolific in July, and they do look so promising 

 for a crop next year; but, of a sudden, comes a wind in saucy frolic, 

 that rips up the half developed roots, twisting and driving them into 

 clumps, poor, forlorn things! Despite the ruin wrought a few take 

 root again, and again the cultivator does its work; and when the 

 ground freezes for winter (following the rules laid down by Eastern 

 horticulturists who may never have seen a prairie, presuming their 

 methods are applicable to all localities), you throw on four or five 

 inches of straw, and say confidently, " lie still, my darlings, safe 

 from harm!" but sometime in March, or earlier, a genuine snorter 

 from the northwest, or other point of compass, pries under the straw 

 and rolls it up into heaps, smothering to death the plants underneath 

 and leaving the rest out in the cold, to frost, heave and dry up. Cour- 

 age, man! some are alive next spring; how tenderly you foster the 

 brave starvelings destined to be robbed of nearly all the pollen they 

 can produce ! But the berries— they are like little child angel visits, 

 few and far between; but enough to warrant the honest report — "We 

 can raise strawberries on the open prairie at a cost of fifty cents a 

 quart — fact!" But, for all that, strawberries and other small fruits, 

 including some of the hardy apples, can in time be made a success, 

 if, lessening no energy in the fruit line, we haste to develop forest 

 belts, evergreens especially, safely enclosing our precious charges at 

 proper distances. 



A plea, too, for our stock that suffer so for want of trees. Finding 

 no feooliug shade, how the cows madden in midsummer, beseiged by 

 flies sucking out their life-blood ! How the beautiful colts, finding no 

 thicket to escape into, dash along the barbed wire fences, slitting up 

 their ears, tearing open their breasts, maiming themselves perhaps 

 for life! Such a fence is the most develish thing ever made; but has 

 the farmer a just reason to curse the inventor, while the injury to his 

 stock may be mainly due to a famine of trees in his pasture? Noth- 

 ing creates such a reign of peace among stock as trees. Repo§ing 

 under their green arches, the cattle there chew their cuds in sweet 

 satisfaction. The horses there huddle together, their heads resting 

 upon each other's necks half asleep, and near by the sheep with their 

 noses close to the ground to sniff the coolest air. How well they ap- 

 preciate their master by good behavior! 



It is problematical whether, in the long run, thoroughbreds can re- 

 tain and transmit their superior points and qualities, pastured and fed 



