246 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



nuisance, while many more have no trees at all. And over the whole country, there is 

 as yet little or no action taken to plant for general effect — to make a beautiful land- 

 scape. True such a work requires organization, but that may easily be accomplished 

 if only the eyes was to be pleased by the wished for landscape ; make the proper effort, 

 and though the time may not come soon, it will come sometime, when regard enough 

 will be had for beauty to secure organized effort for its promotion. 



But while decorating with trees we secure protection, and with protection, profit. 

 So if an appeal to a man's sense of the beautiful fail, we may still make a stronger 

 one to his comfort; and even if that fail us, the longest arrow is still in the quiver — 

 we appeal to his pocket, and that appeal is the winning one. While a northwest gale 

 is howling in frigid fury across the prairie, piercing the many wrappings of humanity, 

 and torturing the poor domestic animals ; while it is the doom of death to all but the 

 hardiest vegetable life, it is a good time to con sider the desirability of Protective 

 Arboriculture. A man placed in such a situation and declaring against the shelter belt 

 and wind break, may justly be deemed a fit candidate for Dr. McFarland's institute at 

 Jacksonville. 



Observant agriculturists know that these shiverings and tremors of their domestic 

 animals, represent a certain extra quantity of corn and fodder to be consumed, or a 

 poorer and less thriving condition. Even a very low temperatnre is endurable, if the 

 air is still, but when in motion, the heat conveying power of the air is increased greatly 

 and every object is cooled the more rapidly. The winds of the prairies every one 

 deprecates, and to moderate them there is but one human resource, and that is Abori- 

 culture. Just how far a liberal use of shelter belts and wind barriers would affect the 

 air currents, of course cannot be predicted, but there can be no doubt that their 

 influence would extend so far as to give good shelter in their immediate vicinity, 

 whether the general temperature was effected or not. Air in rapid motion and water 

 stagnant, are the two conditions of the natural elements, almost always deleterious or 

 destructive. While the stagnant water of many soils is destroying the deeper root 

 fibers in a clammy death, and promoting the destructive fungus growths, the sweeping 

 winds so suddenly reduce the temperature, that the expansion of the freezing fluids 

 rupture their cells, and kill or injure many valuable growths, which protection from the 

 gale might save. 



Nor is this all; sleet-laden branches are snapped by the billows of the wind — the ten- 

 der inflorescence is chilled to death, or the pollen is swept away from the waiting 

 stigma and the ovaries must be barren. Many of the finer ornamental trees are 

 wrenched and twisted out of every semblance of beauty and usefulness. Nature's 

 mulch, the snow, is rolled away in heaps in the least useful place, and the mulches 

 spread by our care over half hardy plants or scattered irretrievably ; and all this 

 because good sturdy trunks and stout pliant branches are not put on ground to wrestle 

 with the mighty winds, and wrest from them their destroying power. Give us timber 

 belts every mile, and shrub or tree hedge between, and we may laugh at the impatient 

 cold of the North Western barren sands, and the harmless sleet of the North Eastern 

 Labrador and New Britain. But the serried ranks which beat back the charges of the 

 storm are also our drainers of water, for they give off from their millions of points the 

 electricity which helps to neutralize the over charged lands and the rains descend ; thus 

 they protect us from the dreaded drouth which, working hand in hand with the 

 tornado, helps to make the deserts. 



