44 PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS UPON TREE-PLANTING. 



4. If planted in belts aronnd the farm, the protection is worth more than the rent 

 of the ground on whicli the timber stands. AH the timber which I have planted, or 

 will plant under the present law, will stand, when ten years old, without having cost 

 me a cent. 



5. It renders a farm so much more beautiful and attractive as a home, and so much 

 more valuable if we ever wish to sell. 



6. One can hardly look on those beautiful groves, with their cool shade in summer, 

 and protection in winter, without a feeling of self-conscious satisfaction that he has 

 done one good thing for himself, for his State, and for his posterity. 



With these facts before us have we not every inducement to go forward in the work ? 

 Our State, as a part of the great confederacy, is taking noble lead in the work. Our 

 State Horticultural Society is giving, and giving most earnestly, all the benefit of her 

 great experience. The State Agricultural Society has also offered large premiums for 

 timber-planting ; but its strongest and most earnest advocates are to be found among 

 those who, to-day, are in house, barn, and field, surround by the protecting influence 

 of groves and belts, and know their full value both in summer and winter. A high 

 state of civilization, and an abundance of timber, must ever go hand in hand ; and it 

 is a hopeful sign of the times, that the whole civilized world is beginning to move in 

 this direction. Iowa, as a State, must move with the current if she maintain her pres- 

 ent proud position. As fine groves of young Cottonwood, white willows, and bos-elders, 

 as I ever saw growing I have seen in the extreme northwest counties of our State, as 

 Clay, O'Brien, and Osceola. In the years lb73 and 1374, the Saint Paul and N. P. R. R. 

 Company planted successfully four millions of trees west of the timber region of Min- 

 nesota, toward the Red River of the North. » » * 



A few words more to one class of our citizens and I have done. To our young men 

 who are just starting life for themselves, and feel as though they needed every dollar 

 of money and every hour of time for other purposes, let me say, get a few cuttings of 

 white willow, or cottonwood, from an older neighbor, or pull up a few seedlings from 

 the nearest river-bottom, or in the proper season gather a few seeds of ash, box-elder, 

 soft maple or elm ; plant, set, or stick, as the case may be, in well-prepared ground, 

 north and west of house and field lots ; plant close together, take good care for two or 

 three years in the way of good culture, and you will almost from the beginning have 

 an a,bundance of cuttings from your own cottonwood and willows to continue your 

 plantation around your fields, and in a very short time you will have any quantity of 

 seeds from your box-elder, maple, and ash, for further plantations. If the quick- 

 growing trees be planted 2 by 5 feet in the rows, an upright growth will be secured, 

 and the needed thinning out, as the poles attain size, will very soon furnish all the fire- 

 wood needed. Set all tlie trees on the outside line, in straight rows, and equal dis- 

 tances apart, and they will, in a very few years, support either boards or wires for 

 a fence. 



TREE-PLANTINO IN EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. OBSERVATION OF MR. 

 GEORGE B. EMERSON, AS TO PLANTING, CULTIVATION, KINDS OF 

 TIMBER BEST ADAPTED TO THE CLIMATE, ETC. 



Mr. George B. Emerson, of Boston, in a letter commending the sub- 

 ject of planting in Eastern Massachusetts,^ remarks : 



In our hard and barren soil, the land on which the seed is sown, or the young trees 

 are planted, must, for many years, be cultivated while the plants are growing, in 

 order that they may make any show at all even in twenty years. They will doubt- 

 less grow without cultivation — but very slowly. If an open pasture or newly cleared 

 land should be taken, the process must be very different in the two cases. In an old, 

 open, uncultivated pasture, the soil and subsoil are usually very hard, presenting 

 great obstacles to the penetration of the roots. In this case, the ground must be 

 plowed, that it may be opened and loosened to the depth of two feet. After the 

 acorns are sowed, or the trees planted, the plow can go only between the rows, 

 leaving the subsoil between the rows unmoved. This shows the necessity of getting 

 the ground in proper condition before the operation of sowing or planting begins. 



The best kinds of oak are those of the white-oak group, viz, the common white oak, 

 the swamp white oak, both of them common in Essex County [Massachusetts], the 

 over-cup oak and the mossy-cup, the latter to be found in Berkshire, the stem-fruited 

 and the sessile-fruited, which grow readily in our climate, and the chestnut-oak, found 

 north and south of us, and the Rocky Mountain oak, found in rocky hills, in several 

 parts of the State. The wood of all these eight is of great value as fuel and for timber 

 uses. The Hext group is the red-oak group, containing the black or yellow barked 



• D-ansactions of the Agricultural Societies of Massachusetts, 1847, p. 42. 



