90 ts . annua REPORT, 
members of the Society. The resolution was passed amid laughter 
and applause. 
The following is the paper in full: 
When a small boy, more than forty years ago, in the pleasant village of 
Canandaigua, N. Y., my attention was arrested by a magnificent great wil- 
low on the premises of Judge A —-, one of the pioneers of that region. 
It was a tradition among the boys that this immense tree grew from a wil- 
low switch which the Judge cut in Connecticut and used as a riding whip 
during his horseback journey from Connecticut to Western New York, and 
for over thirty years of my manhood passed on the broad prairies of the 
Northwest, I have often seen and heard of similar willows with very similar 
‘histories. Now, this is all well enough per se, but when intelligent and 
educated gentlemen, on the strength of such occasional and isolated circum- 
stances, affirm that all you have got to do in order to grow the willow, the 
cottonwood or the Lombardy is to simply stick a cutting in the ground in 
most any sort of a hap-hazard way, they are simply leading the multitude 
astray and doing harm rather than good. The object of this paper is to 
furnish to the people interested in the propagation of forest trees by this 
particular method such practical information as a long and varied experi- 
ence has proved to be correct. 
If this sort of experience is in conflict with tradition and preconceived 
notions, why so much the worse for the traditions and notions. I begin by 
saying that a proper preparation of the soil is not only of primary impor- 
tance, but also a prerequisite condition of success. 
Soil and its Preparation. 
Your ground must be good ground, it must be thoroughly subdued and 
mellow before planting, and right here I propose to point out and expose 
the practical nonsense and absurdity of the proposition that a cutting will 
grow anyhow, so you only stick it in the ground. Acting on this absurd 
proposition, hundreds of thousands of all sorts of cuttings have been stuck 
into all sorts of ground by all sorts of people. The results are well illus- 
trated in the parable of the sower. 
(Before going to bed to-night, you fellows who haven’t read that parable 
for twenty years or more had better look it over.) 
Soon after the passage of the Timber Culture Act of 1873, I read in one 
of the most ably-conducted and widely-circulated of our country papers, an 
editorial showing the settler how to grow a forest under the provisions of 
said act. Boiled down, it simply amounted to this: Strips of breaking two 
or three furrows wide, said strips twelve feet apart and the cuttings to be 
stuck twelve feet apart in the strips, in the raw, unsubdued sod; no further 
labor or expense necessary—result, a forest. I promptly denounced, the 
absurdity of such teachings, but for all that, a heap of fellows had to try it 
on. It would be a good time now for them to report what luck they have 
had. 
In the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, my curiosity has led me 
over quite a large number of tree claims which have been planted in good 
faith in accordance with such teachings. 
