120 ANNUAL REPORT. 



must be careful and not mislead our friends anywhere. It was 

 my good fortune to be one of a number of members of the Ameri- 

 can Forestry Congress who went out on the Northern Pacific Rail- 

 road last August as far west as Mandan, on the Missouri river, 

 opposite Bismarck, and I found that it was the opinion of the scien- 

 tific foresters in that company, frequently expressed from day to 

 day as we journeyed along, that the cotton wood would not endure 

 the dry climate of Western Dakota; that after you pass out of the 

 alluvial soils of the Red River district, closing westerly with the 

 Cheyenne Valley, this tree must necessarily be short-lived except 

 along the low margins of streams. Its natural limit of life being 

 from ten to fifteen years in the dry regions, and apt to be shorter 

 unless sustained by excessive irrigation. 



On our arrival at Bismarck we found a striking proof of this con- 

 clusion of science. On the farm of Mr. Jackman, at Bismarck, 

 in a basin of one of the Missouri benches (the situation being the 

 most favorable of any outside of the Missouri levels themselves, 

 w^here water is deposited by the floods,) we found a plant of cotton- 

 woods some twelve years of age, surrounding a three-acre garden, 

 and were informed by the proprietor that they had been kept alive 

 at an expense of eleven hundred dollars for hauling water to 

 them from the Missouri. In the line of these trees as they 

 passed around the garden were some elevations and de- 

 pressions, and most of the trees on the elevations had begun 

 to die from the tops down, evidently for the want of suf- 

 fiiicent moisture in the ground and in the air to sustain them 

 at their present age. The total precipitation, rain and snow, 

 in that region is only about twelve inches annually, as against 

 30 to 40 in Minnesota, and it is perhaps safe to suspect, at least, 

 that, in such aridity, the cottonwood is not the tree that will be 

 profitable. I would prefer not to give any names, but leave the 

 scientists of that party to speak for themselves; but as the railroads 

 have been spending large sums cf money in cottonwood planting 

 on these dry western plains, and the people are following their ex- 

 ample, attention should be directed to this question of adaptation in 

 forestry with the view of ascertaining if we have any really valuable 

 tree that will grow to maturity there, away from the river bottoms. 

 Prof. Budd claims that the Russian form of the white poplar {Pop iilus 

 Alba) or silver-leafed poplar, has this adaptation, and, besides, that 

 the tree is upright in growth like our American white pine, does not 

 sucker like our American white poplar, and that its wood is of such 

 a nature as to make it almost as valuable as the white pine for 



