Nu. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 249 



maintained in good condition npon the said land, a rebate e<iual to 

 80 per centum of all taxes, local and county, annually assessed 

 and paid upon said land, or so much of the 80 per centum as 

 shall not exceed in all the sum of forty-five cents per acre, the 

 said rebate to be deducted from said taxes, pro rata, and receipted 

 for b^^ the respective tax colh^ctors or county treasurer: Provided, 

 however, That no one property own(.'r shall be entitled to receive 

 said rebate on more thau fifty acres. 



Section 2. All acts or parts of acts inconsistent herewith are 

 hereby repealed. 



Approved— The 11th day of April, A. 1). 1901. 



WILLIAM A. STONE. 



There is one point to which I should make allusion here. In my 

 trips through the State I find the farm buildings unprotected 

 against the blasts of winter to an extent which is somewhat sur- 

 prising, when the value of protection against the cold is so well 

 understood. That it should have been so originally I can well see. 

 The farm was hewn out of the forest, where trees bounded the fields 

 on all sides. The trees were an encumbrance. The cleared area 

 was so small in comparison with the uncleared that a violent sweep 

 of the cold north wind was almost impossible. Now, however, 

 the cleared areas predominate. The protc^cting forest area is cor- 

 respondingly reduced, and our buildings need protection. In ar- 

 ranging for this, two methods are open. One is by planting trees 

 which will eventually grow into lumber of a marketable size and 

 The other is by planting such as are intended simply as a hedge. 

 If you can adopt the former, there is a wide range of trees from 

 which to select. Of course, if you plant evergreens, which retain 

 their foliage during the winter, the protecting belt of timber need 

 not be so wide. Densely planted, white pines would soon clear their 

 trunks of lower limbs and to that extent open the barrier to the 

 passage of Avinds. In other words, they would act, sooner or later, 

 the same as the deciduous leaved trees. According to the character 

 of the soil the oaks, hickories, chestnuts, western catalpa and locust 

 would be the most valuable trees for your belt of protecting wood- 

 land. Among the oaks, owing to its dense mass of downward bend- 

 ing limbs, there is no species so valuable for purposes of protection 

 against storms as the jiin oak. It has, however, no value for 

 lumber. If you should decide upon planting merely a hedge, I 

 would by all means advise one of two of our native trees — either 

 the arbor vitae or the hemlock. Both grow rapidly and both can 

 be allowed to become tweniy-five feet high and either one can 

 be trimmed and kept strictly within hedge size — being at the same 

 time very dense and very ornamental. 

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