INDIANA HOETICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 351 



years, and I can show stakes that have been in the ground twenty years 

 that are still perfectly sound. The Osage orange is easily gi'own. If you 

 will plant the trees thiclv at the start, the trees will send the growth 

 up and make nice fence posts. The Osage orange is not affected by any 

 insect pests that I know of. It makes better posts than any other wood 

 I know of; they are like steel. You can set them down deep enough 

 in the gi-ound to support a wire fence. There is a great deal of oil in 

 this wood. 



Mr. Zion: I believe I have a scheme to solve the forestry problem in 

 the State of Indiana. I am glad to hear another friend here advocating 

 it. I refer to the growing of Osage orange trees. In planting an 

 orchard of fifty acres, I felt that to make it a success it should be 

 protected, so I put in eighty rods of hedge fence on the east, 

 making two rows. On the north I planted 160 rods; on the west, 

 eighty rods more. Now I am going to give you my experience, which is 

 all in line with the statistics given by Professor Freeman. In my orchard, 

 this season, I had an abundance of apples. Farmers from the prairie 

 country came to my orchard for apples; the farmers near timber did not 

 have to buy apples; they had plenty in their own orchards. There Is not 

 an intelligent man in this State that has not arrived at the conclusion 

 that something must be done to stop the vandalism that is destroying all 

 our beautiful Indiana trees. I see the absolute necessity of this. I am 

 satisfied that we never can get the people of the State of Indiana to 

 plant ti'ees and gi'ow forests to take the place of those that were de- 

 sti'oyed. That can not be done, and we are wasting our time when we 

 talk of this farmer or that farmer planting forests. I have gi-own ten 

 bushels of pears on a Keiffer pear tree thirteen years old and sold them 

 for one dollar a bushel, and yet people will not plant Keiffer pears. Now 

 a man that will not plant that kind of tree will not plant forest trees. 

 The heaviest land owners we have in my part of the State are greedy 

 for money, and they are destroying their beautiful groves. One man in 

 my neighborhood destroyed a beautiful one that I would not have taken 

 $500 for. The price of stove wood has gone up, and I am afraid that 

 will tempt many other farmers to like acts of vandalism. 



The first thing to do in the way of helping us to protect the orchards 

 of the State is to remove the law from the statute books that makes In- 

 diana herself a great vandal in the destruction of forests. Last season, 

 when my neighbors failed to have corn crops, I had forty bushels to the 

 arce on my fai-m. People say it is ten degrees cooler while passing 

 through my farm than through my neighbors', on account of the groves 

 on my place. They also say it is warmer in the winter on account of 

 the shelter afforded by the groves. It is not necessary to have ti'ees a 

 hundred feet high to give this effect. You can grow leaves on a hedge 

 fence as well as on a large tree. I expect a great profit from my hedge 



