Ailanthiculture. 197 
result widely different from mulberry culture, where trees obtain 
the age of ten or fifteen years before coming into bearing. 
For example, in March, 1864, I planted on the railway bank 
above mentioned 3,000 trees, two-year old seedlings from France ; 
in 1865, 1,340 of these attained sufficient luxuriance, 1. e., a mini- 
mum of three feet high, to enable me to feed them off, and I got 
a crop of 5,368 cocoons from these, besides feeding them off a 
second time with a second brood, giving an average of about four 
cocoons to each tree; many of these trees attained a height of 
eight feet in the present year. ‘They were planted at a distance 
of two feet from tree to tree, in rows which were some two feet, 
some three, and some four feet apart, but only the trees planted two 
feet apart were sufficiently close to enable the silkworms to travel 
readily from one tree to another when necessary. In course of 
time, however, as the stools increase in size every other tree may 
be taken out, leaving the stools four feet apart. In poorer and in- 
ferior soils a minor degree of luxuriance may justly be expected, 
and it will then become necessary to plant a little closer, and pro- 
bably to wait a little longer before placing the worms on the trees : 
each winter the shoots are to be cut back to a height of eighteen 
inches or two feet from the ground, like an osier bed, in order to 
bring the shoots within easy reach, and to favour their luxuriance. 
In this way too the leaves are thrown out earlier and last longer 
on the trees. 
The.trees may be planted by the spade or plough ; by the former 
900 a-day have been planted on the light soil of France, by the 
latter a good many more. 
Ailanthiculture is never likely to supplant, but rather to supple- 
ment Agriculture, by bringing into cultivation land hitherto un- 
touched; and if the late Lord Palmerston may be considered as 
a public benefactor, who by sowing bent in sandy regions made 
grass grow where it had never grown before, how much greater a 
benefactor would he be thought who introduced a profitable in- 
dustry where nothing had previously been cultivated ? 
Hoeing will be necessary during the summer to keep down the 
weeds, but when the trees are once established, the expense of 
keeping up the plantation will be trivial. Annexed is a French 
calculation of the cost of planting by M. Ernest Rousseau, who 
planted six hectares with Ailanthus trees at Rabutiniére in 
Sologne* (a hectare being 2°47 acres). ‘The land, previously un- 
tilled, was prepared with mattacks in rows 32 inches wide, and 18 
inches deep, at the price of 23 centimes the metre, or about 3d. the 
* Rapport aS, E. le Ministre del’ Agriculture, par M. G. Méneville, p. 35, 
