208 



green leaves, intermixing the white and green through the tree-top, like snow on a leafy 

 tree in early autumn, make it a thing of rare beauty. 



I might weary your patience by continuing this paper on many other varieties, but 

 the two, willow and catalpa, make a very short list, always taking the best at the same cost, 

 and the difference one to three cents of first cost is repaid more than 100 per cent, a year 

 in culture and growth for the next ten years. 



The beneficial efiects of shelter-belts between farms and across townships are well set 

 forth in the paper which follows. 



TREE PLANTING IN SHELTER-BELTS. 

 By Dr. John A. Warder, of North Bend, Ohio. 



For many years past, upon all suitable occasions, earnest and practical tree-planters 

 of the prairie states have been advocating the inti-oduction of this mode of planting trees. 

 They have urged it persistently by writing and by talking, but better still, and still more 

 eloquently and more convincingly, by the practice of the dogmas they have presented. 

 The arguments of a well-grown shelter-belt on the prairie in a windy winter's day cannot 

 be gainsaid by the most obdurate doubter. 



When exposed to the fierce prairie winds it would be well enough to call them by 

 the title of prairie zephyrs, and if sheltered from them by the kindly interposition of a 

 well-grown wind-break of evergreens, or even of deciduous trees, the benefit and the 

 efiect upon the local climate cannot be gainsaid. After such a test no one can any longer 

 question the validity of the claim that forests do modify the climate. The fact being 

 demonstrated by the argumentum ad hominem, the discussion must end. 



But more sensitive, more delicate, and much more accurate tests have been applied, 

 and the effects have been demonstrated by plants themselves, very many of which can 

 now be successfully produced if planted in the same soils, yes, even in the identical 

 stations, where they proved tender, and miserably failed, when planted in the open prairie 

 lands, without these shelter protectors a few short years ago. The more delicate and 

 convincing proofs have been furnished by the use of instruments of precision applied to 

 the solution of this question; their answers have been carefully noted and recorded during 

 continuous years at many forest-stations in Europe, some of these being located in the 

 forests, others in the open lands similarly situated as to soil, exposure, elevation, and 

 alike in all other respects, except the protection of the trees. The results carefully 

 collated and published have demonstrated that the humidity of forest lands is greater, 

 and that the temperature is sensibly moderated — the woods are cooler in the summer and 

 warmer in the winter, thus confirming what every one must have noticed by the test of 

 his own sensations. 



Now that which has been found to be so essential on the prairie, and to yield such 

 happy results, in the increased certainty of all agricultural productions, in those vast 

 regions of agricultural lands that are being brought under the dominion of the plow, in 

 the great central portion of the continent which has heretofore been familiarly known 

 as The West, must be acknowledged to be a matter of national importance. 



This truth is appreciated by far-seeing minds, and we have recently had the satisfaction 

 of reading in a recent metropolitan journal an article which has great significance. It 

 being conceded by all intelligent observers that trees and woods do modify the climate in 

 the localities where they exist, and as it is well known their absence in the broad 

 region of open lands that lie beyond the Father of Waters — that part of our continent 

 now has an arid climate — often seriously affects agricultural productions and sometimes 

 utterly destroying the farmer's anticipated harvest, why may we not hope and reasonably 

 expect to see portions, at least, of that large area between the Missouri and the Rocky 

 Mountains reclaimed to agriculture by the judicious planting of forest trees 1 



Twenty years ago such a proposition was made, and plans were suggested for plant- 

 ng groves on alternate sections entirely across these treeless plains, to demonstrate the 



