Isaac Hicks & Son, Westbury Station, N. 7. — Evergreens 
45 
Windbreak and Screen of Norway Spruce, separating vegetable and small-fruit garden from the lawn, at residence of 
Mr. J. R. Maxwell, Glen Cove, We have 160,000 White Spruce that will make such dense, narrow, permanent hedges 
better than the Norway Spruce. Now is the economical time to buy them. 
Spruces • Picea 
Erroneously Abies, including Pseudotsuga 
The Spruce family ranks equal with the Pines. It is less planted for lumber, but more used for orna- 
mental planting and windbreak. All the Spruces are pointed trees, sprightly and cheerful in appearance. 
Norway Spruce • Picea excelsa 
The most rapid-growing of the family, but not 
the handsomest. It is excellent for hedges, as it 
stands clipping well, and if kept widest at the base, 
so that the sun reaches the lower branches, it will 
keep thick to the ground. A young and vigorous 
Norway Spruce is a handsome tree. To keep it so, 
nip off the tips of the leading branches. Otherwise, 
the trees may become open, ragged and haggard in 
appearance when twenty to seventy-five years old. 
The dislike for all evergreens expressed by a few 
people is based mainly upon Norway Spruces under 
this condition. It is about the only evergreen they 
have known. The American nurserymen are partly 
to blame for this opinion. It has been easier to 
import Norway Spruce than to collect seed of better 
species. They grow quickly when young and are 
easy to transplant. The buyer of trees is also partly 
to blame because he could heretofore generally get a 
bigger tree for the money in Norway Spruce than of 
better kinds. We recommend the Norway Spruce 
for hedges, screens, planting on steep sand banks, 
and as a quick-growing filler in groups of orna- 
mental evergreens to be moved later. 
White Spruce • Picea alba 
The measure of our faith in White Spruce is our 
stock of 160,000 trees. 
Perhaps sixty years ago, Joseph Hicks built 
schooners and sent them to Maine for lumber. 
A few White Spruce trees were brought and planted 
in what is now the garden of Mr. Robert Dudley 
Winthrop. They are now 60 feet high, full and 
dense from ground to top, in decided contrast to the 
gaunt and rusted Norway Spruces of the same age. 
At the arboretum of the late Charles A. Dana, 
Glen Cove, there are trees of similar age within 50 
yards of the sea-wall, fully exposed to the sweep of 
winds across Long Island Sound. They are in per- 
fect condition, and a beautiful blue-green, unin- 
jured by the severest winter. On the Rockaway 
peninsula there are a number of specimens that are 
thriving excellently, being the handsomest evergreens 
planted and the only old ones dense at the base. 
At numerous other points along the ocean front on 
Long Island, there are handsome dense specimens. 
On the Hempstead Plains, even in the most wind- 
swept portions of Garden City, the White Spruce 
has proven to be the handsomest evergreen. 
Why have we praised both the White Pine and 
the White Spruce as the best evergreens? The 
White Pine is a broad-shouldered, old giant, stretch- 
ing his arms widely against the sky. The White 
Spruce, with her narrow, neat skirts, will make the 
world just as happy and beautiful and occupy less 
space.' The White Spruce is a symmetrical tree, 
with a conical head. The numerous branchlets keep 
it always dense and, therefore, it is sure to remain 
an efficient screen and windbreak, because the lower 
branches are retained as long as the tree has suffi- 
cient space. The bluish green, glaucous foliage makes 
1 ts appearance always cheerful and bright. A group 
of them is never gloomy. We have never heard any 
one criticise its appearance or its adaptibility to 
this region. 
The Norway Spruce has some decided faults 
when old, being open, ragged and sometimes dismal. 
