158 Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



there are so many little burr oak saplings creeping along up the hill-sides 

 that I marvel how they got there. This oak is strangely typical of the white 

 pioneer of this section. At first there were a few scattering trees of large 

 size along the banks of the streams, where natural protection from fire en- 

 abled thena to grow and spread their limbs in rugged strength and health- 

 fulness. A few years more, and bushes of the same kind sprouted up in shel- 

 tered nooks and dells and about the bases of the blutis. Before these were so 

 high as a man's head, other germs of oak life broke through the sod further 

 away from the parental stem. And so it went on, until now this sturdy 

 tree promises to possess all uncultivated land, if spared by the ax. Here 

 and there the brown verdure is i-elieved by a speck of green, denoting the 

 presence of a clump of small cedars, or, mayhap, a patriarch that escaped the 

 prairie fires of aboriginal days. These, sharply defined against the gray 

 bluff' or blue sky, and relieved by the brown and leafiess arms of the oak or 

 elm, make a dot of landscape tint would secure iramortalitj' to the artist 

 whose pencil could reproduce it with fidelity to nature."* 



A belief is freely expressed that greater proportionate successful tree 

 growing, and at compartively no expense, has been done by nature, than by 

 man planting. As stated before, by far greater proportions such i:)lanting 

 and growing stands and succeeds than that of artificial processes. Losses 

 are rare, and only from occasional invading fires, and where too thick on 

 the ground the stronger kill out the weaker — no loss in fact, simply adjusting 

 or equalizing. 



Personal knowledge is had, in many instances, where lands twenty and 

 twenty-?ive years ago were considered worthless, have grown to be valued at 

 from twenty to one hundred dollars per acre, solely for the timber value na- 

 ture planted and grew. 



In conclusion let it be remembered, " Man's conquest over nature is not 

 for a generation, but for all generations. One bequeaths its work to the next. 

 The old builders knew, or rather limitations on them, compelled observance 

 of this law. They attempted not to complete a great work in a single life- 

 time. They laid foundations broad and strong. They built as though they 

 meant endurance. They did what they could, and left that unfinished to 

 their successors. So the great walls of the masters remain to-day a wonder 

 to the world— solid in fabric and rich in ornamentation." Let these truisms 

 point the way to those who aim to rehabilitate the denuded, or invest natur- 

 ally treeless domain. 



Xotwithstandiug Dr. Warder was prevented from attending the 

 meeting by the floods in the Ohio river, he has kindly supplied the 

 following paper, which the Secretary deems appropriate to follow 

 the valuable paper by Gov. Furnas on the same topic. Dr. 

 Warder is so well and so favorably known that the Secretary pre- 

 sents this paper without further introduction or apology. 



■•' J. D. Calhoun, in State Journal. 



