STATE HOKTICUIiTURAL SOCIETY. 215 



The people of Iowa are awake to the subject of forest culture — 

 planting ten acres in that State for every one acre planted in Illinois. 

 Should not the farmers of Illinois also engage in this work more generally 

 than they have yet done? 



A. H. Gaston. — If farmers, in planting hedges, would drop Black 

 walnuts along the row at regular intervals these would grow and in time 

 kill out the hedge, which is a nuisance anyway, and then they would 

 make good live posts for stretching wire along, and in time make saw- 

 logs. 



Mr. Galusha. — The fact that this species kills out all other trees 

 and plants near it is the very reason it should not be planted in rows; it 

 should be planted in compact plantations where it may be allowed to 

 occupy the entire ground. 



Prof. Turner. — The Black walnut has not been generally appre- 

 ciated until within recent years. Of late its value has been wonderfully 

 enhanced by its growing scarcity, and at the same time its consumption 

 is increasing, and this fact has caused the country to be ransacked for this 

 kind of timber ; and a profitable business it has become to the one who 

 hunts it out, for generally the owner of the land upon which the trees are 

 found is quite ignorant of its real value, and so it is disposed of for a 

 trifling sum, the buyer cutting down the trees and transporting the logs to 

 the large cities, where he sells it for from eighty to one hundred and fifty 

 dollars per thousand feet in the log. The knottier, curlier and crookeder 

 it is, the higher price it will bring. We should learn a lesson or two from 

 this and plant nuts of this valuable timber-tree on lands where they will 

 grow and which may not be our most valuable farming lands, for when a 

 man has a small grove of timber on his farm that timber gives a mer- 

 chantable value to it, and the cost of producing it is very small as com- 

 pared to the enhanced value of the premises. 



Black walnut grows readily from the seed, and the seed or nut should 

 be planted where it is desired the tree shall grow, as the tree, even if very 

 small, is quite difficult to transplant and make live. I object to this tree 

 as a live fence-post, but would plant it in groves, and not string it around 

 the farm or across the fields ; the why of it is this : that the Black wal- 

 nut^exerts a baneful influence (for some reason to us unknown) on all kinds 

 of vegetation. It kills grass for quite a distance around and other trees or 

 crops cannot be grown closely to it. I had a pine tree killed the past 

 summer which stood two rods away from a Black walnut; therefore, to 

 plant it around the farm in the manner indicated too much land would 

 be spoiled for tillage. A desirable tree, however, for live fence-posts is 



