PARK AND CEMETERY. 
13 
with solid suitable for lawns, all surplus earth 
taken from excavations along the line of improve- 
ment shall be deposited near Crooked Creek in 
Riverside Park, where directed by the Board of 
Park Commissioners, but not to exceed six hundred 
<600) feet distant, measured to the nearest point 
from berm line of embankment; for which the 
■contractor shall receive no compensation additional 
to the price per lineal foot of roadway as herein- 
after provided. 
DRAINS AND INLETS — One thousand six hun- 
dred and fifty (1,650) lineal feet of 10-inch vitrified 
pipe will be laid where shown on plans and to 
grades shown on profile; the pipe shall be laid 
to a uniform grade and the joints well cemented 
with cement mortar. The pipe shall be carefully 
packed or rammed under and around. The trenches, 
when backfilled to an elevation of 2 feet below 
the surface, shall be thoroughly flooded and sufficient 
time for settlement shall be given, and refilling 
shall be done when necessary to bring the work 
to proper grade. 
INLETS — Inlets must be constructed where 
shown on plans; they must be built according to 
detail drawings, and connected with 12-inch vitrified 
pipe as shown. All inlets shall be of an approved 
pattern. The face or open side shall be twelve 
(12) inches in depth and, the weight of inlet shall 
be not less than three hundred (500) pounds; cover 
shall weigh fifty (50) pounds. 
BIDS — The bidder in submitting his proposal 
must state the price per lineal foot of the improve- 
ment, including all items, and for all work com- 
pleted according to plans and specifications and 
no quantities will be aLlowed for, and no allow 
ance will be made for any labor or material nec- 
assary for the full completion of the work pro- 
vided for in the plans, profiles or specifications, 
except for the bid price per lineal foot. 
HARDIER EVERGREENS FOR THE NORTHWEST 
In the states that form the northern 
frontier of our country the coniferous 
family of trees are peculiarly useful and 
necessary to the comfort of both animals 
and men. The fact that they are so com- 
monly found in their forests would ap- 
pear to indicate that a benificent Providence 
had planned them to meet the needs of 
their inhabitants. Even in the places that 
are now bare there are indications that in 
former times they were well covered with 
coniferous forests, and if the fires that for 
ages have devastated our western prairies 
had been kept out they would now no 
doubt be covered with forests of pine and 
fir. 
As important and necessary as evergreens 
are generally allowed to be, and as easy 
as they have been to obtain, comparatively 
few have been planted during the years 
that have elapsed since the settlement of 
the country. The less useful deciduous 
trees have up to this time almost monopo- 
lized the attention of our planters and only 
in occasional places have the more useful 
evergreens been given their full oppor- 
tunity. I think that this state of things is 
largely due to the fact that we have so 
far taken our evergreens from regions 
where the climate is very different from 
our own. So that in transplanting to our 
soil they have been given new hardships to 
endure for which they have been in no 
wise prepared. So far the evergreens that 
have been commonly planted with us have 
come from three sources. The western 
coast of Europe, the forests of the states 
bordering on the Great Lakes, and from 
the Rocky Mountains. The European ever- 
greens, the Norway spruce and Scotch 
pine, while derived from higher latitudes 
than that in which we live have been used 
to the moist, cool atmosphere of coast 
r egions and when planted in our dryer air, 
frequently brown and take on a sickly ap- 
pearance. The evergreens of Northern 
Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the 
white spruce, balsam fir, and white pine 
have been accustomed for many genera- 
tions to moist soils and the shelter of de- 
ciduous trees, and when put out in the 
•open exposure in the dry air and soil of 
Western Minnesota and the Dakotas, lose 
the beauty and thrift that they show in 
their native forests. It is only in compara- 
tively recent years that the evergreens of 
By CLARENCE WEDGE. 
the Rocky Mountains have been planted in 
Minnesota, but they made it evident at 
once that they belonged to a more rugged 
and sturdier race and that a dry soil and 
exposed location would not interfere with 
their health and thrift. But unfortunately 
for our state the seed collectors have 
almost altogether been at work in Colo- 
rado, full six degrees of latitude south of 
us, and in our severer winters some species 
like the Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir 
clearly show that they have been trans- 
planted too far north of their native 
habitat, the pine coming out of the winter 
with seared foliage and the fir with injured 
twigs. 
For many years I have been desirous of 
securing evergreen seed from Rocky 
Mountain forests on our own degree of 
latitude, but as there has not yet appeared 
any professional seed collectors in those 
forests, and ripening their seed as they do 
at a season of year when our time has 
been taken up with orchard work, I have 
never been able to secure any of this 
northern seed until three years ago, when, 
as I reported to the society, I found an in- 
teresting forest of Ponderosa pine in west- 
ern North Dakota, and a year later was 
fortunate in being able to gather a con- 
siderable quantity of seed. Meanwhile I 
have been corresponding with the forest 
service and endeavoring to locate Douglas 
fir on some of the detached groups in cen- 
tral Montana as far as possible from the 
influence of the warm “chinook” kinds and 
the protecting influences of the main body 
of the Rockies. This year I was informed 
that there was a good crop of seed in the 
Big Snowy Mountains, and at the proper 
season I left home prepared to explore and 
gather anything that seemed promising for 
Minnesota and the Western prairies. The 
Big Snowy Mountains are located almost 
exactly in the center of Montana and at- 
tain an elevation of about eight thousand 
feet. They are about one hundred and 
fifty miles east of the main body of the 
Rockies, or nearly the distance across the 
state of Minnesota at St. Paul, and rise as 
a gigantic pile of earth and rock out of 
the midst of a vast plain. I should say 
that they might more properly be called a 
single mountain, as it does not appear to 
be cut in two by any dividing valley. It 
is splendidly timbered and where the ridges 
that seam its sides extend out into the 
plain ever thinning ranks of trees follow 
their crests for miles out from the main 
body of timber. 
Knowing the habit of the Ponderosa 
pine and seeing it more or less from the 
cars all along the way through Montana 
in exposed places where nothing else would 
grow, we were prepared to find this tree 
on the outskirts of the forests which cov- 
ered this exposed mountain, and as we 
rode out from the railway station at 
Judith Gap and came within sight of the 
evergreens that reach out on the tops of 
the ridges that radiate from the mountain, 
we supposed of course that they were speci- 
mens of this hardy species. But as we 
came nearer to them it became evident 
that the trees that were venturing alone 
the farthest out on the prairies were of 
some other species and driving close up to 
them we were surprised and delighted to 
find that they were the Douglas fir, which 
we had scarcely hoped to find outside the 
sheltered valleys of the mountains. But 
here it was the first tree to greet me and 
to prove at once its ability to stand the 
blistering heat, the wintery winds, and the 
almost artic cold of the prairies of Central 
Montana. And more than this they were 
standing on elevated ridges that appeared 
to be as utterly devoid of moisture as any 
soil that I have ever examined. I felt at 
once that these fine old trees, some of them 
two feet in diameter, with foliage as green 
and healthy as I have ever seen in sheltered 
northern forests had proved at once that 
the Douglas fir was a tree equal to neces- 
sities of any of our dryer northern states 
and might be planted with satisfaction and 
assurance where the box elder, ash, cotton- 
wood, and almost any deciduous tree 
would fail. In all my experience on the 
plains I have not seen any deciduous trees 
standing in such locations, indeed, in this 
particular mountain the only deciduous 
trees that I found were groves and clus- 
ters of poplar. The settlers there informed 
me that the presence of a poplar grove 
always showed a moist and springy spot 
quite different from the average soil. Pass- 
ing along the ridges up toward the moun- 
tain, we soon found Ponderosa pine and 
the Rocky Mountain white pine, a rather 
distant relative of the white pine of our 
northern Minnesota and Wisconsin forests. 
