126 



ARBORICULTURE. 



ducts permitted, our native trees will be 

 exhausted, and the United States will be 

 obliged to import lumber from other 

 ports. 



INCREMENT OF GROWTH. 



There is no question but the annual 

 increment of growth of our remaining 

 forests, including all the areas of imma- 

 ture brushwood, is very far less than the 

 destruction each year by fire, by the axe, 

 and the boxing tools of the turpentine 

 operator. 



Over a remarkably large portion of 

 the United States, especially through the 

 South, the evil practice of annual burning 

 of the weeds and grasses in open forests 

 prevails, destroying the natural increase 

 by seeding. 



The result can only be that in about 

 twenty years the mature timber will be 

 gone, and only the small brush cover- 

 ing some of the rougher mountains will 

 remain. 



This will require fifty to seventy-five 

 years to grow into merchantable timber. 

 Thus, there must be a period of fifty 

 or more years in which this region will 

 be practically without forest property. 

 What shall be the supply during this 

 interim ? 



I have endeavored to make this fact 

 plain in all my writings, and to urge the 

 very extensive planting of various trees 

 which possess a high value, and which, at 

 the same time, mature quickly. 



TREES OE EARLY MATURITY. 



In twenty years from planting we can 

 grow willows and cottonw^ood trees. In 

 thirty years forests of soft swamp maples 

 may be produced of sufficient size for 

 sawing into lumber. In a quarter of a 

 century the abele and several of the pop- 

 ulus family can be grown, from which 

 boards may be sawn In the same time 

 black locust will produce fence posts and 



several minor articles, yet having consid- 

 erable utility. But none of these trees 

 possess a very high commercial value. 

 The tulip tree, yellow poplar, which is 

 not a poplar at all, but a liriodendron, 

 and the black walnut are of fairly rapid 

 growth, and if largely planted in the 

 brush lands of New England and the 

 Middle States, would revolutionize the 

 forest productions, as they should out- 

 grow the dwarf growths of those lands. 



Black locust succeeds on very rough, 

 rocky, mountainous lands, where other 

 trees do not thrive. It should occupy 

 such lands, and can scarcely be too exten- 

 sively planted. But locust will not make 

 lumber. It can not be sawn into any tim- 

 ber profitably, and its uses are restricted. 



A majority of Indiana and Middle 

 State forest trees, however, are of such 

 slow growth as to discourage our impa- 

 tient American farmers. 



White oak in one hundred years will 

 make good saw logs. Ash in eightv 

 years, 3^ellow poplar for best lumber 

 one hundred years, although of value for 

 small logs at forty or fifty years. Decid- 

 uous cypress of the Southern swamps re- 

 quire three to six hundred years. Beech 

 one hundred and fifty years, but never 

 gains a very high commercial value. 



Some of the sequoias of the Sierra 

 Nevada Range are thirty centuries old, 

 having come into existence while Sol- 

 omon was on his throne. 



CATALPA SPECIOSA A TREE FOR THE PERIOD. 



A natural product of Indiana, growing 

 in the slashes or wet bottom lands along 

 the lower valley of the Wabash River, 

 gives promise of being the tree for the 

 times, the one tree of the entire world 

 which combines all the essential qualifica- 

 tions for the re-foresting of this land. 



Extreme durability in contact with soil ; 

 great beauty of grain, taking a high pol- 



