228 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
good many elms in that grove the tops of which are half dead. Per- 
haps I will plant the grove over to bur oak, and when the other trees 
die out I will have a grove. 
Mr.C.L. Smith: If I were to answer your question I would say 
the trees are planted too far apart, the ground kept too open and 
the grass allowed to grow. Some twenty-four miles west of where 
Mr. Wedge lives, twenty-nine years ago, I planted a mixed grove of 
about seven acres, consisting of soft maple, ash, box elder, cotton- 
wood and willow; I planted them very thick; I think none of them 
were more than six feet apart in the rows. The rows were six feet 
apart, and the trees two feet apartin the row. The man who now 
owns the farm has been cutting timber from that grove for the last 
fifteen years. I was there two years ago and looked the grove over 
carefully, and there were no dead trees there, when there were 
lots of dead trees in the groves west of Minneapolis. They aretwo 
feetin diameter; I did not see one with a dead top. Mr. Wedge spoke 
of underbrush being a good thing to putin such a grove. We put 
in black raspberries, and the family has all the black raspberries 
they want to use, and they have never planted any anywhere else. 
The weeds and brush grow in there and keep the ground quite shad- 
ed over, and there is neverany grass growing there. I doubt ifitis 
possible to grow any kind of timber in groves if you get the trees 
wide enough apart so the grass will grow. 
Mr. Wedge: There isa grove of bur oaks at Albert Lea that stand 
about fifty feet apart, and the trees are about thirty feet high; they 
are surrounded with blue grass—the ground is covered with blue 
grass—and the leaves are religiously raked up every fall, and those 
trees are showing signs of giving out and dying, and some of them 
have died. The older trees are nearly all dying. Those are young 
ones, and they will hardly reach their full prime and vigor. 
Mr. Elliot: What is the soil? 
Prof. Robertson: Itis a gravelly subsoil. If those same trees 
had been in a grove with natural conditions I have not the least 
doubt they would have done well. Their ancestors lived to ten 
times their age. 
Mr. T.T. Smith: May I ask a question in regard to oak trees? 
Last fall in certain sections of Dakota county the foliage of the bur 
oak was eaten off bya worm. Will those trees, be injured? I went 
through the forest and saw hundreds of them, and I do not think I 
saw a bur oak that had any leaves on. 
Mr. C.L. Smith: Seven years ago when they ate them there 
was no apparent injury afterwards, and I was examining them 
a week ago, I was examining the branches and cut some off, and 
they were as full of sap as ever. Seven years ago they ate theleaves 
off clean,and the next spring the leaves came out just the same; 
and nine years ago we had a freeze on the 28th of May, and the bur 
oak came out all right. 
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