ARBORICULTURE 



191 



Forest Plantation of Pennsylvania Railway 



The Pennsylvania Railway West of 

 Pittsburgh has entered upon a careful 

 experiment on forest planting in Indiana. 



The company owns a farm of sixty-five 

 acres, in Kosciusko Count}', two miles 

 east of Winona Lake, six miles east of 

 Warsaw, which has been appropriated 

 to the purpose of a thorough experiment 

 with the catalpa speciosa for the produc- 

 tion of timber for railway purposes. 



The tract is about three-fourths of a 

 mile in length along the north side of 

 the Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne and Chicago 

 tracks, and adjoining the right-of-way 

 grounds. 



In topography this tract presents a 

 variety of interesting .features. At the 

 east end is a gravel plateau sloping to 

 north and west. In the center is a broad 

 ridge of gravel, while a broad, deep ditch 

 extends along side this ridge, where 

 gravel was excavated some years ago. 

 For the most part the remainder is level, 

 quite flat, a portion being covered with 

 water during the wet seasons, and grown 

 up with water grasses, cat tail flags, and 

 swamp growths. 



A public highway crosses the railway 

 and passes through the land from north 

 to south, near the center of the tract. 



In soil there is an equal diversity. 

 The knolls are of course gravel accom- 

 panied with sand. The slopes have had 

 sand washed dawn and it has covered 

 the surface, while the level ground varies 

 from a sandy loam to that of pure muck 

 of great depth, formed by ages of vege- 

 table growths in the basin of former 

 lakes. 



It will be of special interest to the land 

 owners of northern Indiana, where so 

 much of these wet lands and muck 

 deposits exist, to know how well the 



catalpa speciosa succeeds in such moist 

 localities. 



In the summer of 1905 I was requested 

 by the Pennsylvania Railway officials to 

 make an examination of this Kosciusko 

 County farm and report upon the prac- 

 ticability of planting it with catalpa 

 speciosa trees. After a critical exami- 

 nation I advised in favor of the project. 

 In consequence the land was plowed 

 and preparation made for work. In the 

 spring of 1906 sixty thousand yearling 

 trees we?e secured and they were planted 

 7x7 feet apart. Upon the outer edges 

 of the tract, three rows were doubled, 

 being three and one-half feet each way, 

 to serve as a wind break. They were 

 thoroughly cultivated during the season, 

 and the worst of the weeds and grass 

 sod were destroyed. 



On November 5th, in company with 

 Mr. Graham, Engineer Maintenance of 

 Way, and Mr. F. I. Brown, lumber agent, 

 I again visited the tract to inspect the 

 plantation and decide upon the treatment 

 of the trees in the future. 



We found that excepting a remarkably 

 small number of trees broken down and 

 torn out by the plow, all the trees were 

 living and had made a very satisfactory 

 growth. Many which we measured were 

 three inches diameter at the ground, the 

 average height being five to six feet. 

 Upon the gravel knolls the height was 

 quite regular and about four feet growth 

 during the season, while the muck lands 

 showed an average of about six feet. 



Probably one-third of the trees were 

 straight, upright with single stems, while 

 the remainder had sent out several 

 branches which divided the strength of 

 the trees and will require considerable 

 pruning of side branches to make them 

 grow into straight stems. 



As in the Wabash Valley, where these 



