across the gunwales, perfectly sound, after constant use twelve 

 years. 



Capt. Kurtz knows of catalpa trees killed by the ice on the 

 bottoms of the Wabash River, in the January flood of 1828, still 

 standing, and sound after fifty years. Prof. John Collet says, 

 a this timber is universally accredited with wonderful power 

 to resist decay and time, and that rails made by Col. Decker 

 in the year 1800, were in use forty-eight years afterwards, and 

 that after diligent inquiry among those familiar with catalpa 

 timber for a great number of years, I could rind no one willing 

 to say it is liable to rot." Fifteen years ago, W. F. Howell, of 

 this vicinity, saw, in the Rural New Yorker, a statement that 

 catalpa was the most durable wood known, and especially 

 valuable, arid excelling black locusts, red cedar and mulberry, 

 in that it had no sap wood, so that trees of three or -four yours 

 growth would not rot when set in the ground for fence stakes, 

 hop or bean poles. The above named trees have a larger pro- 

 portion of sap wood while young, and therefore are of far less 

 value while young. Mr. Howell says he has verified this state- 

 ment most fully, on his farm near the Soldiers Home, on which 

 a large number of catalpa trees are growing. 



Small catalpa limbs and sprouts of two years' growth, placed 

 in the ground to support peas and vines, and used for that 

 purpose year after year, show no signs of decay. 



Mr. J. P. Tallent, of Burlington, Iowa, writes that some 

 years ago he observed that the trunks of two cutalpa trees 

 which had stood in the ground for more than twenty yours, 

 used for clothes-line posts, showed no signs of decay, and be- 

 gan to study up the tree from books, from which, and personal 

 inquiry and correspondence, he soon learned its great value. 

 Some years ago, Suel Foster, of Muscatine, Iowa, observing 

 that limbs cut from catalpa trees, after lying on the ground 

 for years, did not rot like the limbs of other trees, began to 

 make inquiries and comparing observations with others, learn- 

 ed its great value. 



In 1860, S. H. <fe J. B. Binkley, living near Alexandersville, 

 Montgomery County, Ohio, while repairing a fence Avith stakes 

 and a rider, fell short of stakes. As a temporary make-shift 

 they trimmed up some catalpa limbs, cut from two catalpa 

 trees in their yard, and used them for stakes. Five years 

 after, the cattle ran against one of these stakes and pulled it 

 out of the ground. Greatly to their astonishment they found 

 the stake perfectly sound, both in the ground and out. All 

 the other catalpa stakes were the same. These stakes, on ex- 

 amination last summer, were found to be sound, after being 

 eighteen years in the ground. 



So Avell do farmers, in Southern Indiana and Illinois, under- 

 stand its value for fence-posts that it has been nearly all cut 



