AMERICAN FOREST PLANTATIONS. 391 
any case the question will now be subjected to a practical test, 
and the plantations are so extensive, and, as is reported, so thrifty 
in growth, that one generation will suffice to determine with 
certainty and precision how far climate is affected by clothing 
with wood a vast territory naturally destitute of that protection. 
I have thus far spoken only of the preservation and training 
of existing woods, not of the planting of new forests, because 
European experience, to which alone we can appeal, is conver 
sant only with conditions so different from those of our own 
climate, soil, and arboreal vegetation, that precedents drawn 
from it cannot be relied upon as entirely safe rules for our 
guidance in that branch of rural economy.* 
woodless, with the exception of the small province of Xylea between the 
Dnieper and the Gulf of Perekop. They are known to have been occupied by 
a large nomade and pastoral population down to the sixteenth century, though 
these tribes are now much reduced in numbers. The habits of such races 
are scarcely less destructive to the forest than those of civilized life. Pastoral 
tribes do not employ much wood for fuel or for construction, but they care- 
lessly or recklessly burn down the forests, and their cattle effectually check 
the growth of young trees wherever their range extends. 
At present, the furious winds which sweep over the plains, the droughts of 
summer, and the rights and abuses of pasturage, constitute very formidable 
obstacles to the employment of measures which have been attended with so 
valuable results on the sand-wastes of France and Germany. The Russian 
Government has, however, attempted the wooding of the steppes, and there 
are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of Odessa, where the soil is of a 
particularly loose and sandy character. The tree best suited to this locality, 
and, as there is good reason to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the 
Ailanthus glandulosa, or Japan varnish-tree. The remarkable success which 
has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at Odessa, will, no doubt, 
stimulate to similar trials elsewhere, and it seems not improbable that the 
arundo and the maritime pine, which have fixed so many thousand acres of 
drifting sands in Western Europe, will be, partially at least, superseded by 
the tamarisk and the varnish-tree. 
According to HonEnstrern, Der Wald, pp. 228, 229, an extensive planta- 
tion of pines—a tree new to Southern Russia—was commenced in 1842, on 
the barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisabethgrod, and has met 
with yery flattering success. Other experiments in sylviculture at different 
points on the steppes promise valuable results. 
* Many valuable suggestions on this subject will be found in Bryant, 
Forest Trees, chup. vi. et seqq. 
