24 THE GOLD MINE 



I never could understand why the farmer considers 

 horticulture a sealed book which he never can open. It 

 is a part of his business, as much as raising wheat, corn, 

 cattle and hogs. It is easy, too, and intensely attractive. 

 Strange that a man will go by a tree or plant and know 

 nothing about it, and be a perfect stranger to his kind- 

 est neighbors. He shuts himself out of a wide world 

 of enjoyment. 



The more one studies the more he is impressed with 

 the 



INTELLIGENCE OF THE PLANT AND TREE WORLD. 



We should regard the tree as an intelligent, hard 

 working, honest friend, endowed with an intuition that 

 is amazing. We talk of the '^cunning of the rat,'' and I 

 sometimes think a tree is endowed with the same keen- 

 ness. 



I know a Cottonwood the roots of which plowed their 

 way through hard and compact ground two hundred 

 feet to a cistern and drank it dry. The people won- 

 dered what had become of the water, and there stood the 

 tree smiling in triumph, its leaves green and fresh, and 

 it was growing with the greatest vigor in a dry time. 



I have a cottage in the Rockies where I love to be 

 with nature and watch things. One fall, on a very dry 

 mountain side I saw a lot of ponderosa pines which 

 seemed to be dying. I examined them closely. The 

 soil was poor, or rather no soil at all, only decomposed 

 granite, and it had been very dry for two years. Those 



tf C. State ColU«« 



