40 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 



and where stock trample and browse them few succeed without the protec- 

 tion of some friendly shrub or herb growth. 



Upon a dry rocky mountain in New Mexico I found many spruce trees 

 growing among the dwarf oak clumps, but not one elsewhere ; goats and 

 donkeys have browsed the oaks and destroyed all coniferous growths, but 

 such as were within the dense clumps where animals could not reach 

 them. Thinned to one stem, all suckers removed, these oaks grow more 

 thriftily, and, in good soil, well protected, make handsome trees thirty feet in 

 height. 



On the mountains, late frosts frequently destroy the early growths, and 

 new shoots and leaves must be provided from the older wood ; hence the 

 bushes are dwarfed and by a succession of annual frosts the trees have had 

 their nature changed to the habit of bushes. 



On the mesas browsing animals keep them to a height of but two or three 

 feet, yet so strong is the vigor of the root system that they survive such treat- 

 ment where other plants would quickly succumb. 



The attention of forest planters and the government is called to these 

 facts, and to this plant, together with the yucca, and similar hardy, arid region 

 growths, as a means of afforesting large tracts in the western plain country, 

 with the aid of such shrubs as nurses, to shade the young trees, and prepare 

 for them a fertile soil, pines ponderosa or yellow pine, cedar (juniper), pinon 

 and many other trees can be secured. 



A farmer who can only expect to live a few years, and the capitalist who 

 wants to see the profit resulting from his investment, cannot or will not, enter- 

 tain any proposition requiring many years for its accomplishment. 



This nation, each state, and many corporations, will continue in existence 

 indefinitely. The ones who will control the nation's affairs and who will carry 

 on the business of the future Republic, should have some of the benefits which 

 we have enjoyed and not be given the orange with its juices all squeezed out. 

 The men of to-day are removing all the forests and leaving as an endozcmcnt for 

 their children a treeless country, which the money they are now laying up for their 

 children will never replace. 



