How to Manage Forest Seeds, 

 Seedlings and Cuttings. 



Most of our prairie farms are tillable. For this reason they specially 

 need wind-breaks. Then why not copy nature's art here? The wind-breaks 

 could be economically placed in separate groups and clusters and curves, 

 leaving wide spaces between them for fields and orchards, thus breaking 

 the winds from all directions, and yet leaving the best possible ventilation, 

 so that none of the crops will be crowded or shaded. There is such a thing 

 as blending the beautiful with the utilitarian, making the farm a perpetual 

 satisfaction. 



THE SQUARE STYLE. 



If farmers will persist in having the square style of forestation, surmising 

 that they thus abridge the forest acreage and better arrange their agricul- 

 tural grounds, there should be the same studied effort to adapt the species 

 of trees to the situation and where they can best perform their functions. 

 The hardiest and most flexible should be planted on the outside to cut the 

 prevailing winds, and these, on our prairies, are generally from the 

 west and south in the seasons of plant growth. It is not wise to leave the 

 south open as some do, as our hottest wind-waves beat in from that direc- 

 tion, like so many blistering simoons. The denser wind-breaks are, there- 

 fore, needed on these two sides, also protection on the north and east, but 

 not to the same special extent. 



WINDROWS AND SNOW-DRIFTS. 



On the outside plant two rows of white willows not over one foot apart. 

 As it is desirable to prevent snow-drifting on your premises, leave an 

 open space next the willows, where it will naturally lodge, of twenty or 

 thirty feet. Beginning on the hither side of the snow-lane, plant, four 

 feet apart, several rows of ash; then rows of box-elder, cottonwoods, ma- 

 ples, elms, hackberries, oaks, buttarnuts, and line the inside of the "decid- 

 uous wall" with white spruces, arbor vitass, pines, and other evergreens, 

 not right up under the shade, but thirty or forty feet distant two, three, 

 yes, four rows of them, so placed that the trees in each row will form per- 

 fect triangles with each other, thus the better protecting each other. In 

 a few years their branches will begin to interlock in solid arches. Such a 

 forest will resist any wind and will protect the fields and orchards in the 

 leeward safe from all harm. In less even than a decade that farm will 

 be worth ten times more than it was at first, and that forest has made it 



