•j^O BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, 



upou the prairie, and the bridges that span the waters of the Kan- 

 sas and the Platte. The destruction of hard wood timber is going 

 on at a pace equally rapid. Nothing strikes the emigrant from the 

 Atlantic slope, on returning after years of absence, so forcibly as 

 to see those hills which in his youth were forest-crowned, now 

 bare and desolate, and the streams in which he was accustomed to 

 fish, dwindled to mere trickling rills." Another generation will 

 need a greater supply than can be furnished by the forests left to 

 it by the present, especially in the vast woodless regions of the 

 west. 



Our whole country is destined soon to feel a scarcity of wood 

 and timber ; and this want will first, and with greater force, fall 

 upon that portion which originally possessed the least. Those 

 states and territories which have received a large share of the emi- 

 grants from the Eastern States, must have recourse to extensive 

 tree planting for timber-growth, as well as for the local protection 

 that timber belts will afford to orchards, dwellings, barns and 

 stock, from the fury of cold winds. 



Everybod}^ has a general notion of the thermal effects of trees 

 as arresters of cold winds ; yet there has been a singular neglect 

 to make observations and put them on record, to establish its de- 

 gree ; and, indeed, I have not seen a reported case till quite 

 recently. 



Mr. John II. Tice, of St. Louis, says: "My neighbor, Mr. 

 Henry Shaw,'^ at his Botanical Garden, has a dense hedge of 

 Scotch fir about a thousand feet long and fifteen feet high, extend- 

 ing north and south. One bitter cold day, when the wind was 

 blowing from the west at about twenty miles an hour, curiosity 

 induced me to make some thermometrical observations along the 

 exposed and sheltered sides of the hedge. The day was cloudy, 

 and the time between two and three o'clock, so that if there was 

 any solar influence it was on the west side of the hedge. On the 

 west side the thermometer indicated 9° ; on the east side, par- 

 tially hung in the hedge, 15°. Passing eastward, with a consider- 

 able ascent of the ground, the mercury gradually sunk, and at 

 about ninety feet east of the hedge it stood 11°. A trial at differ- 

 ent stations on both sides of the hedge gave the same average 

 results." 



* The name of Henry Shaw stands deservedly by the side of that of George Peabody 

 as a public benefactor, he having donated a large, highly improved and valuable tract 

 of land to the city of St. Louis, for the purpose of a public park. 



