Transplanting conifers may be done at any time when there is no frost in the air, except while they are making their first young growth in May or June. Perhaps the best time is during the spring and summer rains. Select small trees in preference to larger ones, for they have not such a firm hold upon their location, and adapt themselves more easily to new places. Trees from open, rather exposed places will succeed better than from shady canons. Never leave the roots a moment exposed to the sun and air. This is the great secret of transplanting evergreen trees from the mountains. Keep the roots protected. Provide yourself with a piece of matting or sacking or burlap, and after carefully tying up the tree with all the roots uninjured, and with as much earth about them as possible, place it in the matting, and cover with more earth. In planting, which should be done as soon as possible, take the same precaution about exposure to air, digging a large hole, spreading out the roots, and pressing down the soil firmly about them. Shade the trees during the first year, summer and winter, and keep the soil moist and cool about them. The blue spruce, especially, requires constant moisture until well established.

The two most important factors in successful transplanting are, roots well protected while moving, and a moist, cool soil about them when planted. In order to retain this needed moisture and coolness in the soil as long as possible, it is best to mulch, or cover the soil, for about two or three feet around the tree, with coal ashes, hay, straw, or dead leaves. When the trees are well established the branches themselves will shade the ground around them, and it will be only necessary to supply them with water, which should be sprinkled over the whole tree as well as on the ground around it. The end, of those branches which are too long should be pinched back, by merely pinching off the end of the new growth as it forms. A tree should never have more than one leader, and when this should be lost and two or three others start up in its place, one of these should be selected and the others pinched back. In this simple way, requiring only a little watchful care from time to time, you will soon have a compact, pyramidal, perfectly formed tree, a charming monument of vegetable beauty, whose grand and lofty qualities will never tire, but be a source of unending delight, "a thing of beauty and a joy forever." [Mr. Parsons, who gives the above sound advice, is President of the Colorado Forestry Association, and last March made an admirable address on Forestry at Colorado Springs. - Ed. G. M.