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104 ANNUAL REPORT. 
course better yet would be two rows planted a good distance, perhaps fifteen to 
twenty feet apart. It is a mistake to think evergreens are of slow growth. 
Norway pines at ten years old, with fair care, will be from fifteen to twenty feet 
high and spread over a diameter of eight feet, and Scotch pines will be if not 
as tall still heavier trees, more spreading in the top, and our white pines, 
which when large, are the handsomest pines we have, will be quite as tall. 
The first three or four years they all grow comparatively slow, especially the 
Norway spruce, but after that, stretch upwards surprisingly, and every year 
seems to double their weight. 
As a source of pleasure | know of nothing in the line of tree growing that 
can compare with growing evergreens. They are things of beauty from the 
first. Winter as well as summer they gladden our eyes with their brightness, 
and while we are pleased to watch our apple trees and vines, and cherish a 
hope of sometime getting fruit from them—the hope being the largest share 
of fruit we do get—we are sure our evergreens will not disappoint us, but will 
give us just what we expect of them. 
A home ornamented and protected with evergreens is beautiful, not only to 
the occupants but to every passer-by. We work hard to get money to spend in 
those ways that afford us pleasure; for the comforts, luxuries—for those things 
that in the aggregate we term civilization; things that distinguish us from the 
savages. And one of the most prominent of these is a home with pleasant sur- 
roundings. The real necessities of life are few. If we can get a high degree of 
pleasure without the intervention of the hard work and money, it is surely 
profitable for us to do so. JI need not say how, like a garden in, the desert, 
would seem such a home as I have suggested. But even in the matters of dol- 
lars and cents it pays. As a matter of profit, the shelter afforded to a farmer’s 
cattle by a dense evergreen belt about his yards will add more to their comfort 
every winter, and if to their comfort, more to their weight and thrift, and more 
to their owner’s pocket, than the cost of such protection. It surely need not be 
said that an animal compelled to stand all day and to eat its food in a yard ex” 
posed to wind from any quarter, can not as profitably consume and digest its 
hay or grain as one well sheltered. In a mild winter every one knows how 
much less cattle consume to keep in good condition than a severe one. A belt 
of evergreens about our homes and yards makes all our winters comparatively 
mild. Even in so favored a climate as that of Florida, it is found that the ten- 
der orange tree groves are much better, more sure to bear fruit, and less liable 
to injury from sudden changes in temperature, when protected from the north 
winds by a belt of evergreens. 
Those on a prairie farm enclosed by a living belt of green, find that they can 
enjoy the luxury of an early garden from their sheltered spot, earlier and better 
small fruit. Their fields, protected from the sweeping winds, start the grain 
earlier in the spring and yield better crops of all kinds; their harvest is not in- 
terrupted by winds blowing the wheat from the reaper and*the hay from the 
load, stacks are not untopped, and in the house, when a door is opened, every- 
thing is not carried away as by a whirlwind, nor is every one blown until their 
nerves are rasped to the last degree of irritation, and long before night become 
more tired than a hard day’s work would make them. And-if ever it was de- 
sired to sell the farm, it would be found there was a money value in it much 
above a bare, treeless prairie farm, and would find a much readier sale. The 
Director of the Botanical Garden of Harvard University says ‘‘that as a means 
