EVERGREENS. 



71 



and timely attention a man can raise all the evergreens he can use 

 for about two cents apiece. 



So brush up, clear out a patch of hazel brush if you have it 

 and raise your own. Plant in some sheltered spot — in your lati- 

 tude it might be best to use a screen, but anyway raise your own. 



I once took off my hat and made a bow to myself, twenty-five 

 years ago. At Franklin, Nebraska, I had an experiment station. 

 This town is near the 100th 

 meridian and on the verge 

 of the semi-arid regions, 

 and during half the seasons 

 you can leave the "semi" 

 out and call it arid. Then 

 sometimesthe sirocco rages. 

 At one time the wind was 

 blowing like a blast from 

 the furnace — mercury 112. 

 I had white pine, white 

 spruce, Black Hills spruce 

 and Scotch pine in the nurs- 

 ery, also a lot of bull pine, 

 and every tree went down 

 but the bull pine. That 

 seemed to laugh at the per- 

 formance and appeared to 

 say "give me some more." 

 I planted perhaps an 

 eighth of an acre in straight 

 rows, six feet apart. 

 Twenty-five years after I 

 visited them and was sur- 

 prised at the result. The 

 trees were about four to six 

 inches through, straight as 



arrOWS and twenty feet tall. Bull pine, 2 years old, twice transplanted. 



There was a canopy of green above, for the branches had met. 

 The ground was covered with a carpet of needles. It was then I 

 paid my respects to myself. I wished I had planted forty acres, 

 and I would have had a mecca which would have been a resort 

 in summer when the green canopy would have been a shelter 

 from the sun, and the breezes would fan the visitors as they 

 reclined in the shade on that soft carpet. 



