1883.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



337. 



kind of tree 1 can now think of, hardy enough to 

 endure this cHmate, have done well except the 

 beech and chestnut. When I commenced my 

 ornamental planting in 1851, 1 had already a num- 

 ber of trees that I had purchased from Benjamin 

 Hodge, of Buffalo, and Custead & Elliott, of 

 Cleveland, in 1848. As far as I recollect, they 

 all grew very well except the chestnut. They had 

 no beech trees. Wishing to have a specimen of 

 every tree that would endure our climate, I sent a 

 man up to the beech woods in Wisconsin, only 

 twenty to thirty miles north, and standing on ex- 

 actly such land, to all appearances, as this ; hun- 

 dreds of acres of fine beech forests extending from 

 the edge of the bluffs back a mile or two, and al- 

 though these woods have long been cut down, 

 there are still thousands of beech trees in the pas- 

 tures and on land that has not been cultivated. 

 The twenty or thirt\ beech trees brought from 

 Wisconsin were planted, one here and there, 

 on my grounds, skirting the lawn, along the edge 

 of the ravine, etc., and to-day three of them are 

 standing. The best one, six inches in diameter 

 and about eighteen feet high ; the next four inches 

 in diameter, and the next two and three-quarter 

 inches. On the same soil, with the same care, I 

 have grown a Norway spruce that measured, when 

 cut down last year, thirty inches in diameter. It 

 stood within one hundred feet of the largest beech. 

 A larch tree standing near this beech, cut down 

 after standing twenty years, had made an inch in 

 diameter from the time it was planted. Even a 

 sugar maple planted several years later now meas- 

 ures over eighteen inches in diameter. I have 

 planted purple beeches and weeping beeches over 

 and over again, but they would all die in two or 

 three years. 



Twenty years or more ago, before the beech 

 woods were cut down, when the wild or passenger 

 pigeons were migrating south, they would invari- 

 ably fly along the edge of the bluff, and nearly 

 every man who owned a gun would be standing 

 on the bluff shooting them, just after they had 

 filled their crops with beech nuts. Hundreds of 

 them were wounded and left to be eaten by vermin, 

 and the nuts left in the proper places and condi- 

 tions to grow. Aside from this, scores of hawks 

 were preying on the flocks ; and before the white 

 man came here Indians frequented this place in 

 great numbers ; yet in all the thousands of beech 

 nuts that must have been scattered here, there has 

 never been a beech tree found either on the bluffs 

 or under the bluffs ; but, what is somewhat re- 

 markable, in the ravines that have cut their way 



through the bluffs, a very few beech trees may be 

 found, not over twenty trees, in all the ravines be- 

 tween Chicago and the State line. Land-slides in 

 these ravines show the different strata, and they 

 are all very much alike, some of almost clear 

 gravel, of clay, of sand and gravel mixed, etc. and 

 as far as I have been able to examine these beech 

 trees, have found but one strata on which they can 

 grow — i. e., a strata in which there is little or no 

 limestone gravel. Now as to the chestnut, hun- 

 dreds of trees have been planted in and around 

 our city, mostly twenty to thirty years ago. I do 

 not know if there is one left, but a few years ago I 

 knew of two trees ; they had dwindled along for 

 over twenty years and were two or three inches 

 through, while on a sandy loam ridge without 

 gravel, about fifteen miles north and two miles 

 from the bluff, there stood, a few years ago, a num- 

 ber of chestnut trees that were then growing very 

 rapidly, and may be yet. 



Now, as nearly all our gravel is limestone, I 

 have long been of the opinion that beech and 

 chestnut trees will not grow in limestone soils. I 

 have never seen anything on this point in print ; 

 and although I have inquired of many men living 

 in beech and chestnut districts, I have never been 

 able to get any satisfactory information on this 

 point. My theory got a terrible shaking last 

 month when on the grounds of Mr. A. R. Whitney, 

 of Frankhn Grove, III. Mr. Whitney's land is, 

 in the main, like the ordinary rich prairie lands of 

 Illinois, strongly impregnated with lime ; and 

 there I saw a row of chestnut trees and a row of 

 beech trees, of large size and thrifty growth. I 

 remarked to him, that the sight of these trees h*ad 

 dissolved my twenty years' theory into thin air ; but 

 when I told him what my theory was, he showed 

 me that this was not limestone land, but near 

 where sandstone rock is cropping out, and where 

 he has quarried out sandstone rock. What is the 

 reason that the beech will not grow ? 



[We should be inclined to the opinion that 

 the beech will yet grow, and that the fail- 

 ures arise from some imperfections in the speci- 

 mens used. In regard to the indisposition of 

 many forests to produce young trees, in the cases 

 which have come under our notice, it has been 

 from the absence of circumstances favoring the 

 germination of the seeds. Circumstances favor- 

 ing germination and circumstances favoring the 

 growth and vigor of the tree, are often very diff"er- 

 ent. In most forests, so far as the observation of 

 the Editor goes, it is but occasionally that a good 

 year for seed growth occurs. — Ed. G. M.] 



