374 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
DECIDUOUS TREES AFFECTING MOISTURE AND TEM- 
PERATURE. 
J. P. ANDREWS, FARIBAULT. 
We might mention, first, some reasons why we need more trees and 
shrubs. Just as it makes the airof a room more moist to have 
a wet blanketin it and saturate the carpets with water, so is the 
atmosphere made more moist by the evaporation from the leaves 
of the trees and the carpet of moist leaves under them. When heavy 
rains come, this natural mulching of leaves on the ground holds 
the water until the loose porous soil under the leaves has time to 
drink it all in, and it goes down five, ten, twenty or more feet, carry- 
ing plant food with it to the numberless rootlets that drink it in, 
whence it is returned as sap through the circulation of the trees, 
leaving the plant food for the development of wood, fruit and seed, 
while the water is evaporated through the leaves, making the at- 
mosphere more moist and congenial to the health and growth of 
plant and animal life, again to be precipitated in the form of rain as 
before. But suppose that it falls on a hard, dry, baked field; in 
place of being absorbed by the earth, it runs down to the creek, into 
the river and ocean, andis lost to the section of country from which 
it started, excepting the small portion brought back py the winds. 
It is not only necessary for the best interests of agriculture that we 
have this more evenly moist atmosphere, but it is our duty to work 
industriously and intelligently for this end- 
The forest-covered territory is like a great sponge, having for its 
breadth the area of the forest and for its depth from the tops of the 
trees down into the ground twenty to forty feet, or to the extent of 
the roots of the largest trees. No one can question that a sponge 
of these dimensions is capable of taking up an immense amount of 
water from the melting snows and spring rains, and giving it off in 
moisture during the heated period of oursummers. It is not at all 
imaginative, it is only common sense. 
We have had, during the past year,a sad demonstration of the ex- 
treme variation of temperature and moisture—a very nice winter, 
and delightful March weather, followed not only by April showers 
but by torrents of rain that washed our fields as they haven’t been 
‘for years, if ever before. 
In May when our orchards were in bloom and fruit setting, the 
temperature kept changing from cold to colder, till not only our 
fruit was mostly killed, but many trees were severely damaged, and 
some killed outright, being most disastrous to the trees that were 
fullest of bloom and fruit. Then followed a protracted drought 
that, in the language of the fast horseman would properly be classed 
asa “stayer,’ and “record beater.” It staid with us from May till 
October, for its intensity and long duration beating all former rec 
ords. This was very damaging in all parts of the country; in some 
parts, most notably on the broad Western prairies, where there was 
no forest growth to check the drying winds or pump up water to be 
evaporated and moisten the atmosphere, it was ruin. 
Now if one-third of the area of those vast Western prairies was 
covered with trees, converting it into that big sponge,it would without 
