282 TRANSACTIONS OF THE KANKAKEE 



H. S. Bloom — A great many years ago. when I was a boy, we 

 used to plow with wooden moldhoards which, of course, did not turn 

 the top under, and we raised mammoth crops of corn. 



A. H. Burt — In planting sweet potatoes if we throw two fur- 

 rows together by back furrowing and leave the ground on each side 

 hard, will it prevent the tubers from running out long and spread- 

 ing in the ground? 



Answer, a voice — Yes. 



DISCUSSION ON FORESTRY. 



Opened by President Milo Barnard: 



In a forty-minute discussion on Forestry one is at a loss where 

 to commence on account of the vastness of the subject. The width, 

 depth, and length of this question precludes the possibility of doing 

 it justice in so limited a space of time. Weeks of discussion, and 

 whole volumes filled with the subject matter, would fail to exhaust 

 this interesting as well as useful subject. The time is not far dis- 

 tant when the preservation, the renewal, and the planting of new 

 forests will be considered one of the most important questions that 

 can engage the attention of the individual tiller of the soil, of states 

 and nations. The question may properly be divided into the follow- 

 ing heads or propositions, each of which is susceptible of almost 

 innumerable subdivisions : 



The necessity and utility of forest planting. 



The mode or manner of doing the work. 



What to plant. 



And will it pay. 



The last proposition is partially contained in the first, for any- 

 thing that is necessary and of utility, pays, although it may not 

 directly in dollars and cents, according to the modern acceptation of 

 the term. Now if I should add the preservation of forests I will 

 have laid out work enough to occupy our members for many meet- 

 ings, for embraced within the points here given, I find that there was 

 sixty-eight papers catalogued at the Forestry Congress held in Mon- 

 treal last August, composed of four hundred and forty -five partici- 

 pants, and although they divided the congress into three sections. 

 and continued their labors for three days, yet, for want of time, 

 perhaps half the papers presented could not be read except by title. 

 And for our little society to attempt the discussion of such a deep 

 and far-reaching problem seems almost futile. But as small rivulets 

 united form the river, every little helping, so the small streams of 

 knowledge converging to the same pointy must form the broad river 

 of practical knowledge on the subject of forestry that must sweep 



