250 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



The Pine grows well on all but the underdrained lands where stagnant and unhealthy 

 "water renders the earth sodden. Hickory, Oak, Ash and Elm, grow splendidly every 

 where if planted right ; they are the standards for strong work and a twenty year old 

 sapling of either is long enough to cut up for almost any use, and the best thing to be 

 said in their favor is, that the rough sawn lumber is worth from three to seven cents 

 per foot measure, giving a prospective profit even to the slower growing of them, far 

 above that to be desired from fuel plantations. 



Then we do not lack for beautiful woods for ornamental work ; Black Walnut, the 

 prince of cabinet woods, which has already taken the palm from Mahogany ; the cabi- 

 net Cherry, Curled and Birdseye Maple, Honey Locust, and Banduc or Zebra wood, 

 though the principal, do not make up the list ; and all are of ready growth and may 

 be grown with great profit. 



We had thought to prepare a schedule, showing importations of the manufacturing 

 woods, but have found the work o( collecting data, far too great and had to abandon 

 it, before any definite information of value was reached, except the one great fact that 

 the values of imported woods exceeded in every case the most enlarged estimate. The 

 fencing interest is dependent upon importations of the material for dead fences to a 

 great extent ; the fences of native material are on the decrease in most localities, while 

 a good share of the business of the lumber merchant arises from the sale of fence lum- 

 ber and posts. We take for granted that the operations of importation of material 

 and exportation of money to pay for it are always bad economy, when the money might 

 just as well remain at home for other uses, if we would use home material costing no 

 more than the imported. Upon these grounds, hedging is doubly profitably to a com- 

 munity, first profitable in using home productions and retaining at home the cash 

 resources of the country ; and secondly profitable in giving a fence which in the aggre- 

 gate of years, is very much less costly than the dead wood fence of like efficiency. 



We have endeavored to give the prominent hedge plant of the West, the Maclura, a 

 fair and careful consideration, and with results as follows : 



1st. North of Chicago in most localities, it is not possible for the most careful cul- 

 ture and attention always to produce a good hedge, if the plants used are the ordinary 

 seedlings ; only when the planting takes place at the beginning of a series of mild 

 winters, is success certain with ever so much care. This conclusion has been reached 

 after inspecting many hundred hedges, through all the time since the introduction of 

 this plant as a hedge ; and finding that where one mile of good hedge was completed 

 more than a hundred miles were failures. Of course ignorance and carelessness have 

 largely to do with this result, but the immense per centage of loss even in the most 

 careful hands, proves conclusively that incompatibility of climate is the great destroy- 

 ing cause. 



2nd. The Maclura, like other plants propagated from seeds, sprouts "into a great 

 number of varieties differing in form, and other characteristics. This fact, which seems 

 to have been heretofore overlooked by professional propagators, we deem of great 

 importance ; for one of the traits of difference of seedlings, is a difference of hardiness, 

 and it may be that some way of propagating from tested hardy varieties, by root cut- 

 tings, layers or the like, can be adopted, and thus the rigorous climate be overcome at 

 last. Everybody has noticed that in the same hedge row, the plants show different 

 degrees of hardiness, some killing back, others never ; and if the Osage men will take 

 hold of our hint upon varieties, they at least may make money out of it. 



