THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
lOI 
ducing industry. For instance, the State Board of Trade 
of California, has requested the railroad companies to 
collate for publication the tonnage separately of differ¬ 
ent classes of fruit products of the state. In its 
instructions to agents the Southern Pacific Railroad 
company says ; 
These statistics are useful in many directions, but especially 
in preventing the over-production of any particular article. In 
addition to the items called for and specified in the circular No. 
3078, agents are required to request shippers to specify on ship¬ 
ping orders and shipping receipts the particular kind of fruit 
offered for shipment. If citrus fruit, state whether oranges or lem¬ 
ons ; if green deciduous fruit, give particular kind; if dried fruit, 
state particular kind if possible; if canned fruit, give name of 
fruit if possible. As these statistics, which it is proposed to keep, 
are dh-ectly in the interest of the producer, it is hoped shippers 
will co-operate with the railroad company in furnishing on their 
shipping receipts and orders full particulars of article or kind of 
fruit shipped, that same may be noted on waybills and properly 
collated by our auditing department. In doing this work the 
Southern Pacific Company incurs considerable expense, and it is 
hoped that shippers will, by their co-operation, make the work as 
complete as possible, and thereby accomplish the end desired by 
the State Board of Trade. 
This is but one of many instances which might be 
cited showing what is being done in fostering and 
advancing the industry. Other states are doing much, 
but might they not do more ? Are the nurserymen fully 
alive to the advantages to be gained by co-operation, by 
the passage of needed state and federal laws, by educat¬ 
ing the planters along lines which shall remove prejudice 
and which shall stimulate a desire for the cultivation of 
those kinds of fruit which will prove profitable ? 
Too much cannot be said in deprecation of the plan 
of management of the World’s Fair which pro¬ 
hibits the taking of photographs by any one except 
the official photographer, except by means of hand 
cameras of certain sizes, and then only upon payment 
of $2 per day. Perishable exhibits are passing away 
daily with no opportunity of preserving illustrations of 
them. There are numerous indications that the big 
Fair is in many respects too extensive for the proper ad¬ 
ministration of those who have been intrusted with it. 
Ordinary errors of judgment could be overlooked but 
wide departures from a course which is natural and in 
every way beneficial deserves a rebuke at every oppor¬ 
tunity. _ 
An international exhibit of fruit culture will be held 
under the auspices of the Society of Fruit Culture of 
Russia at St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1894. Its 
object is stated to be “to show the present condition 
in Russia and other countries of the cultivation of fruits 
and vegetables, of viticulture, the cultivation of medi¬ 
cinal plants, horticulture, and of the manufacture of their 
products.” A congress of pomologists will be convened 
simultaneously with the exhibition, and all persons inter¬ 
ested in horticulture and pomology, whether in Russia or 
in other countries, are invited to participate in the ex¬ 
hibition. 
PAPERS ON TRADE TOPICS. 
The following papers were presented at the recent 
meeting of the American Association of Nurserymen : 
THOUGHTS ON EVERGREENS. 
Robert Douglas, Waukeo.an, III. 
On a lovely morning in March, as I was preparing 
for a ramble through a canon in California, I received a 
notice from our worthy secretary, informing me that I 
had been appointed to read a paper before this conven¬ 
tion, entitled, “Thoughts on Evergreens.” How I 
wished to compress the thoughts of fifty-seven years 
into half that number of minutes, but this could not 
be ; therefore I concluded to confine my thoughts to 
evergreens growing in the canon I was about to explore, 
which consist of Redwood, the Baytree, the Madrona, 
and the evergreen oaks, but when I saw that the 
Redwoods, which were immense trees at the time this 
continent was discovered, had been cut down over forty 
years ago, and that the hunter’s fires had followed the 
woodman’s axe, “coming events cast their shadows 
before,” and my thoughts went forward to the condition 
of evergreens at the end of fifty-seven years. 
I herewith take a glance at the first fifty-seven years, 
and leave the second for a younger member of this 
convention to report on in the future. I well remember 
sailing up the St. Lawrence River in May, 1836, when 
in sight, for the first time, of an indigenous evergreen 
forest, saying to myself, “ MYll, now I can ramble in 
the woods to my heart’s content.” No gamekeepers 
here! No finger-boards cautioning me to beware of 
man-traps and spring guns. We reached Quebec May 
21st, in the midst of the spring fleet, as even at that 
early day vessels came from Great Britain in great 
numbers, making two trips each year, spring and fall, 
coming in ballast and going back laden with lumber, 
which was brought from the interior to Quebec In 
1873 I traveled from Quebec to Niagara Falls, forests 
everywhere in sight, farmers girdling the trees and 
growing farm crops among the gaunt dead pines, which 
looked like goblins on a moonlit night. On my way to 
Vermont, in 1838, I saw fields fenced with white pine 
stumps, only a little way east from Troy, N. Y. East 
of Bennington, Vt., they were cutting down the timber 
and making it into charcoal. On the eastern side of 
the Green Mountains farmers were felling the trees in 
windrows and burning them. During the spring of 
1844, I traveled through virgin forests in Michigan. 
The northern part of that state was then covered with 
white pine, and the same was true of Northern Wis¬ 
consin and Minnesota. I never imagined at that time 
that lumber would ever become scarce in this 
country, but when I traveled to the Pacific coast, in 
1849, and had passed through more forests in the first 
four miles from the shore of Lake Michigan than all the 
