PROTECTIOIS' TO FARMS. 



FKOM A LETTER OF CHARLES DOWNING, OF NEWBPRG, NEW TORK, TO THE EDITOR OF THE 

 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



When I saw the prairie land for the first time, it struck me very forcibly, and 

 I have often thought of it since, how much more comfortable the inhabitants 

 might be if they would plant hedges or wide belts of trees to screen them from 

 cold winter winds, and also be a protection to their crops, especially fruit. If 

 each owner of one or two hundred acres of land would plant their boundaries or 

 division lines with belts of trees, say from twenty to one hundred feet wide, they 

 would find it to their advantage and comfort. 



Besides the protection, the trees would in a few years, when large enough to 

 thin out, be valuable for firewood and timber. An objector might say, " It would 

 be very expensive to procure and plant such wide belts of trees." To such I 

 would reply, that many kinds, one year old (which is large enough), could be 

 imported very cheap from the English and French nurseries by the 1000, such as 

 elms, ash, maples, beech, birch, linden, larch, alder, &c. Agents in New York 

 city would order them on application. 



The ground should be ploughed a year previous to planting, and well worked 

 through the summer, with or without a crop, as most convenient. The following 

 spring put in the plants from three to six feet apart ; those which make the 

 largest growth, such as elms, &c., plant on the back line, and so on with the 

 different sizes, so as to have the lowest growing kind inside or front ; the last or 

 inside row it would be well to plant with evergreens, say Norway spruce, because 

 it is a faster grower than evergreens generally, and small plants can be obtained 

 cheap. 



Osage orange, locust, and chestnut, being fast growers, would be desirable to 

 mix with the above-named kinds. 



Another plan would be to procure seeds of any of the fast growing kinds of 

 trees, grow them in beds in the garden one year, and then transplant them in the 

 belts or screens. But there would be failures and disappointments, and it might 

 not prove as cheap and satisfactory as to import them. 



But the quickest mode of obtaining a screen for protection would be to pro- 

 cure cuttings of some of the free and strong growing varieties of the willow, such 

 as Salix triandra, S. Beveridgii, S. Purpurea, &c., which grow from forty to sixty, 

 and seventy feet high, and very rapidly, too, in a deep moist soil, and very suit- 

 able, no doubt, to much of the prairie land. This, however, would not be so 

 valuable for general purposes, when grown, as elm, maple, &c. ; but would make 

 its growth in about half the time. 



For profit and quick growth combined, there is nothing probably equal to the 

 common yellow locust (Robinia Pseudacacia) ; it will not only make a fine belt 

 for protection in a short time, but for fencing posts and durable timber (< 



