THE OSAGE ORANGE AS A HEDGE PLANT. 547 



State was in its infancy. To his utterance of these forcible 

 truths, the people of Illinois are largely indebted for the 

 comprehensive system of common schools that is now the 

 pride of the State, and the power which has carried it for 

 ward, and made its men and women foremost in the land in 

 resisting the encroachments of tyranny, of whatsoever kind. 



THE INTRODUCER OF THE OSAGE ORANGE FOR 

 HEDGE PURPOSES. 



Thus engaged, he traversed, day by day, these broad prai 

 ries that wanted only timber to make them the paradise of 

 the farmer. Not a habitation was to be seen except at 

 long intervals, when some skirt of timber enabled the hardy 

 pioneer to procure logs for his cabin, and rails for his first 

 corn-patch. Dug-outs, cabins built of sod, were a make-shift 

 then unknown. It required the still greater lack of timber 

 of the country then called the &quot; Great American Desert,&quot; 

 but now the fertile fields and smiling homesteads of Kansas 

 and Nebraska, to suggest this idea. 



Thus journeying from town to town in the good cause of 

 education, his practical mind was ever asking the question : 

 &quot;What can public schools do for families thus situated?&quot; 

 Schools could not flourish without compact settlements ; set 

 tlements could not be organized without something to fence 

 fields with. The &quot;no-fence&quot; law was not then in vogue, 

 and the herding of cattle away from the fields of grain was 

 not yet practiced. Mr. Turner at once set himself to experi 

 menting, and, after spending an immense amount of time 

 and trouble, fixed upon the Osage Orange as the plant that 

 could be most easily made available for hedging purposes. 

 To this he adhered with all the tenacity of his nature, 

 through good and evil fortune, till at length &quot; Turner s folly,&quot; 



