258 EVERGREENS. 



Dr. Lyons says: "We must not even allow the 

 earth to dry on the outside of the evergreen roots, 

 if we want the trees to live." 



There are plenty of these trees of the best varie- 

 ties that will do exceedingly well in the northwest- 

 ern part of Iowa, northeastern Nebraska and the 

 whole of South Dakota and Minnesota, and when 

 they are placed in the hands of the planter in good 

 condition, and then handled by him as directed, 

 they will be extensively grown as they should 

 be. 



Fruit and forest trees may be handled more care- 

 lessly and recover, but not so with the evergreen. 

 The sap is resinous, and by some chemical com- 

 bination is held in solution in the fluids so 

 long as they are kept moist, but almost as soon as 

 the outer surface of the roots and rootlets become 

 dry, this resin is deposited in the cells which are 

 thereby clogged, and the tree is as truly dead from 

 that moment as it will be in a month after it is 

 planted when the last needle has dried up and 

 gone, and it stands there a dry and red monument 

 to what was once a "thing of beauty." 



There is another cause of the failure to meet 

 evergreens here as we do in the Mississippi valley; 

 that is the lack of adaptation of varieties to our cli- 

 mate. We have been groping in the darkness for 

 more than a hundred years; longer than the 'chil- 

 dren of Israel were looking for the promised land. 

 We have tried to acclimatize to our dry atmosphere 

 the eastern trees, and those from foreign countries, 



