256 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the upper part of it, determined to let them grow, aud they 

 soon formed a flourishing grove. 



"As soon as they were well grown, a fine spring appeared in 

 place of the occasional rill, and furnished abundant water in 

 the longest droughts. For forty or fifty years the spring was 

 considered the best in the Clos du Doubs. A few years since 

 the grove was felled, and the ground turned again to a 

 pasture. The spring disappeared with the wood, and is now 

 as dry as it was ninety years ago." 



The influence of belts of trees, especially of spiked-leaved 

 species, on local climate is important. Such plantations 

 serve as a material check to the natural force of the cold 

 winds from the north, which rapidly lower the temperature, 

 hasten evaporation, and blow into drifts the snow, which 

 would otherwise protect the ground with an even covering. 

 There is probably no way in which the farmers of this State 

 could more easily or more rapidly increase its agricultural 

 product than by planting such screens from the north-east to the 

 north-west of their farms ; and their attention is particularly 

 directed to the importance of this subject. Such plantations 

 w^ould be too limited in extent and too widely scattered to 

 have any general influence on our climate, or the flow of our 

 water-courses ; but, as a means of direct profit, it does not 

 seem unreasonable to predict that such protection to our 

 fields would increase the profits of their cultivation fully twenty 

 per cent. 



Orchards thus protected are still productive, and all 

 gardeners know that plants generally supposed too tender to 

 support our climate, will thrive when planted under the pro- 

 tection of a garden wall, or among evergreen trees. What 

 garden walls are to the horticulturist, these broad evergreen 

 plantations should be to the farmer. 



Mr. J. J. Thomas, as quoted by Lapham, says : "Isaac 

 Pullen, a well-known nurserj'man at Hightown, New Jersey, 

 showed me, last summer (1864), several belts of evergreen 

 trees which had sprung up from his nursery rows to a 

 height of twenty-five or thirty feet in ten years, and he stated 

 that within the shelter of these screens his nursery-trees, as 

 well as farm crops, averaged fifty per cent, more than iu 

 blank or exposed places." 



