226 



place, at a small distance from Paris, he continued his experiments 

 on arboriculture to the very last day of his life. 



The main point of those experiments was to turn to advantage 

 those sandy or marshy soils, considered as utterly sterile, and, 

 through forty years of experiments, he was enabled to prove that 

 they might be rendered productive and valuable by the cultivation of 

 certain foreign trees which succeed well in such soils. 



In a letter, bearing date of October 24, 1852, and addressed to 

 the President of the American Philosophical Society, Mr. Michaux 

 recommends to the particular attention of the people of the northern 

 and middle States of the Union, the cultivation of the Russian pine, 

 Pinus Sylvestris, as thriving well in all the sandy lands upon which 

 scarcely another tree will succeed. With the view to remedy the 

 great scarcity of wood, under which this country is beginning to suf- 

 fer, through the rapid and improvident destruction of the native fo- 

 rests, he recommends also the cultivation of bushy or spreading trees, 

 producing copses, or taillis, to which he has applied a special mode of 

 culture, more rational and more favourable to the development of ve- 

 getation, and, consequently, more profitable to the landholders. He 

 was, at the time, preparing for publication a work in which he in- 

 tended, succinctly, to expose his ideas on those subjects, and to lay 

 open the result of his observations and practical experience for the 

 particular benefit of the American arboriculturists. 



In this same letter, Mr. Michaux informed his colleagues of the 

 Philosophical Society that, wishing to give the American nation a tes- 

 timonial of his heartfelt gratitude for the hospitality and assistance 

 which his father and himself had received in this country, during 

 the course of their long and toilsome journeys, he had made tes- 

 tamentary provisions in favour of this Society, and also of the Socie- 

 ty of Agriculture and Arts of Boston ($14,000 for the former, 88000 

 for the latter), with the view to afford the means of promoting the 

 progress of the science of Sylviculture in the United States. 



Mr. Michaux died of a stroke of apoplexy, in the month of Novem- 

 ber, 1855, at the age of eighty-five years, at his country residence of 

 Vaureal. He had been occupied, the whole day, planting American 

 trees and directing himself his journeymen. He withdrew from his 

 work in good health, dined moderately with good appetite, and went 

 to bed at his usual hour. At about one o'clock his wife heard him 

 move about and calling; she instantly ran to his apartment and found 



