102 | ANNUAL REPORT. 
ing to the size of the plow, and if soft wood is wanted it can — 
be raised from cuttings if they are stuck very early, and the 
land must either have been made ready late in the fall or early 
in the spring ; but if little seedling trees are planted, and kept 
back, as in a dormant state, late planting is also successful. 
They should be stuck or planted close to the north side of the 
ridge, two to three or four feet apart in the rows, and kept 
clean of weeds for a few years. | 
Cottonwood, Lombardy poplar, balm of Gilead, red and 
white willow, and the like, all grow readily from the cuttings. 
They should be about eight to twelve inches long, and so stuck 
that only one eye is above ground, and in a very short time 
they willbe a forest. Inthe fourth year thinning out has to be 
begun, and kept up, so as to let sunshine in, or the trees will 
not thrive, and many would die; but if one-half are cut out 
in.the fourth and fifth year, wood enough can already be saved 
to do the cooking on any ordinary farm, if the grove is one- 
eighth of an eighty acre lot, and in a few years more will sup- 
ply all that is necessary, and if one-twentieth part of the trees 
should be standing for twenty years enough firewood could be 
cut, and be of as much value asif the land had been sown with 
grain, and the cost of raising it deducted. 
But as such a lot could be planted with more useful timber, 
small seedling forest trees should be procured, such as white 
ash, shell bark hickory, white oak, black oak and butternat, 
black locust, red elm and the like; also different kinds of 
maple, all of which would be more valuable than soft wood, 
and pay a larger profit for the better varieties planted. If 
these little trees should be planted every third or fourth row, 
or in every eighth row, and the soft timber cut out from time 
to time, it would pay still better, as there would be more leaves 
for mulch, and the hard wood trees would be straighter and 
better for mechanical purposes. I have in mind a white oak 
tree standing in a fence corner, and the fields are mostly cul- 
tivated, that has gained in twenty years seventeen and a half 
inches in diameter. A Norway spruce thirteen years planted 
is twelve inches in diameter, and is thirty-six feet high; a 
cottonwood twenty-three years from the cutting, six feet from 
the ground, measures eight feet three inches in circumference; 
Lombardy poplar, thirteen years from cuttings, is two feet 
and over, and fifty feet high; black walnut, twenty years the 
nut planted where it stands, no cultivation, is fifteen inches 
in diameter. But enough of this. 
FOREST TREE CULTURE IN GERMANY. 
In my native country (New Bavaria, Germany,) the forests 
are all owned by village corporations, counties or States, 
