AMERICAN FOREST PLANTATIONS. 379 



Prof. J. D. "Wliitney, in two very important articles, entitled 

 "Plain, Prairie and Forest," in the American Naturalist for 

 October and November, 1876, expresses the behef that the origin 

 of the treeless prairies is not dependent on cHmate, but on the 

 character of the soil and of the geological formations from which 

 it has been derived. The absence of forests, he thinks, is con- 

 nected with " extreme fineness of soil," especially if of a silicious 

 character, and his opinions on this point appear to be confirmed 

 by recent observations in Ceylon. I can not, however, adopt 



original inhabitants. The climatic conditions unfavorable to the spontaneous 

 growth of trees on the prairies may possibly be an effect of too extensive 

 clearings, rather than a cause of the want of woods. 



It is disputed whether the steppes of Russia were ever wooded. They 

 were certainly bare of forest growth at a very remote period ; for Herodotus 

 describes the country of the Scythians between the Ister and the Tanais as 

 woodless, with the exception of the small province of Xylsea between the 

 Dnieper and the Gulf of Perekop. They are known to have been occupied by 

 a large nomade and pastoral population down to the sixteenth century, though 

 these tribes are now much reduced in numbers. The habits of such races 

 are scarcely less destructive to the forest than those of civilized life. Pastoral 

 tribes do not employ much wood for fuel or for construction, but they care- 

 lessly or recklessly burn down the forests, and their cattle effectually check 

 the growth of young trees wherever their range extends. Hommaire de Hell 

 informs us that the Taurida was abundantly wooded when it passed into the 

 hands of the Russians in 1774. The Russian peasants soon completely stripped 

 the soil of its forests. 



At present, the furious winds which sweep over the plains, the droughts of 

 summer, and the rights and abuses of pasturage, constitute very formidable 

 obstacles to the employment of measures which have been attended with so 

 valuable results on the sand-wastes of France and Germany. The Russian 

 Government has, however, attempted the wooding of the steppes, and there 

 are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of Odessa, where the soil is of a 

 particularly loose and sandy character. The tree best suited to this locality, 

 and, as there is good reason to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the 

 Ailanthus glandulosa, or Japan varnish-tree. The remarkable success which 

 has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at Odessa will, no doubt, 

 stimulate to similar trials elsewhere, and it seems not improbable that the 

 arundo and the maritime pine, which have fixed so many thousand acres of 

 drifting sands in Western Europe, will be, partially at least, superseded by 

 the tamarisk and the varnish-tree. 



According to Hohenstein, Der Wold, pp. 328, 229, an extensive plantation 

 of pines — a tree new to Southern Russia — was commenced in 1843, on the 

 barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisabethgrod, and has met with 

 very flattering success. Other experiments in sylviculture at different points 

 on the steppes promise valuable results. 



