184 REPOET OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



showed even those most ignorant in regard to the number and value of 

 our woods how dependent we are ujjon them for many of the conveu- 

 iencies of life, and how deserving the forests are of protection. 



♦ TREES ON THE WESTERN PLAINS. 



As showing the practicability of successful tree culture in the arid 

 legions of the "West, where such culture has been pronounced by many 

 to be impossible, one of the field agents of the division transplanted 

 several hundred trees of various kinds from the western portions of 

 Kansas and Nebraska, and even from regions beyond, where they had 

 been artificially planted, and set them out upon the exposition grounds 

 at New Orleans, there to put out their leaves afresh, thus giving occu- 

 lar demonstration that trees will grow, because trees do grow, under 

 what many have regarded as forbidding conditions. Within a few years 

 many millions of trees have been planted in portions of Kansas and 

 Nebraska which before were nearly if not quite destitute of trees, and 

 they have grown and flourished. The established fact that trees, val- 

 uable for fruit, for shelter, and for timber, can be successfully cultivated 

 on much of what has been called the Great American Desert is of 

 great practical importance from an agricultural point of view, and will 

 be the means of attracting settlers to that region who otherwise would 

 turn away from it. It does not follow, because any portion of the 

 country is now or has been for a long time treeless, that it must remain 

 so, or that this is its natural condition. We know of places now barren 

 deserts which once were fertile and abounded in trees. The hand of 

 man has brought them to their bare and barren state. And as the 

 hand of man has done this, so it can restore to them, in many cases at 

 least, their verdant covering by restoring to them the proper safeguards 

 and conditions of tree growth. But little of the earth's surface, certainly 

 within the temperate and equatorial regions, is naturally doomed to 

 sterility. France and Germany have reclothed with trees large dis- 

 tricts of drifting sands, and in our own country the dwellers upon Capo 

 Cod, which !■& to so great extent a barren sand area, though in early 

 times well clothed with forests, have found it comparatively easy to es- 

 tablish there groves of the pine; and the pine once established as a shield 

 from the salt spray and violent winds of the ocean, other trees, such as 

 flourish in the same latitude, can be added to the pines. It is impossible 

 to say as yet where a tree cannot be made to grow. 



NEW VOLUME OF REPORTS ON FORESTRY. 



Early in the year a new volume, the fourth in the series of Eeports 

 on Forestry, was published, embodying in part the results of the in- 

 vestigations made by this division during the two preceding years. 

 Among the more important contents of this volume may be mentioned 

 a very full report from six of the prairie States in regard to the success 

 which has attended tree-planting there. This report was made from 

 information received in reply to thousands of circulars sent to all parts 

 of those States. The replies received were tabulated and digested, and 

 so arranged as to convey specific information, easily referred to, in re- 

 gard to each county in the States from which reports were received. 

 This, of course, was but a gleaning of the wide field presented for in- 

 vestigation. It was, however, an approximate exhibition of the adap- 

 tation of various trees to particular localities which may be of much 

 service to planters in the future, enabling them to avoid mistakes by 

 availing themselves of past experience. 



