IN THE FRONT YARD. 43 



derosa pine and concolor fir to Prof. Green. He raised 

 beautiful trees from them. But the winter of 1904 was 

 famous for its death waves which sought out the weak 

 spots of everything. It hit Nebraska and damaged many 

 things supposed to be ironclad, and then it hit Prof. 

 Green's plantation hard, and many pines went under 

 and others had a ragged look and many of the beau- 

 tiful concolor firs were killed outright. 



What was the trouble? The seeds were gathered 

 from the foothills of the Eockies. Had it been taken 

 from the high altitudes where for ages the trees had 

 been inured to deep snows and intense cold they would 

 have been all right. The picea pungens and Engleman 

 spruce are taken from an elevation of 10,000 feet, and 

 they are hardy in Manitoba. 



White spruce from Maine and [N'orthern Michigan 

 are worthless in ISTebraska. 



But a portion of that great family have worked their 

 way down in the Black Hills about 300 miles north in 

 a dryer climate. They are the identical white spruce, 

 but as their habitat borders on the great plains they 

 are all right. White spruce from the northern part of 

 Minnesota can probably be moved down to any part of 

 the state. We can move the conifer of the Kocky 

 Mountain foothills down to almost any portion of iN^e- 

 braska and have it do well. But you cannot always 

 move it north with safety. A state will have many dis- 

 tinct districts. For instance, white pine and E'orway 

 spruce will do in our river counties, when west of the 

 100th meridian they are worse than Avorthless. The 



