PLANTING OF THE ASH SAND DUNES. 75 



pliorus. It follows, then, that according as the percentage of combus- 

 tible tissue exceeds that of the incombustible the timber will be less 

 durable, and hence, for technical purposes, of less value. Therefore, 

 soils and subsoils in which there is a fair amount of lime, i)otassium, 

 silica, &c.— in short, those rich in alkalies, produce timber of the best 

 quality, while such as contain an overabundance of moisture yield tim- 

 ber neither of such durability nor of so high value. 



PLANTING OF THE ASH. 



Mr. J. L. Budd, now of Ames, Iowa, in a paper published in the 

 Transactions of the Northern Illinois Horticultural Society (l867-'68, p. 

 72), advises keeping the seeds of the ash through the winter in kegs 

 or boxes, mixed with clean moist sand, taking care that they become 

 neither too wet nor too dry. Freezing will do no harm. The ground 

 should be marked and prepared as for corn, and planted at the in- 

 tersections, placing four to six seeds in a hill. They should be care- 

 fully cultivated, and the next spring thinned to one plant in each hill, 

 the vacancies being supplied. By planting thus thickly, the young 

 trees get a straight growth. At the end of six years, every alternate 

 row north and south should be thinned out, and at the end of ten years 

 every alternate tree in each row. When twelve years old, on good soil 

 and with proper culture the first four years, the grove would have 12,000 

 trees on 10 acres, averaging 8 inches in diameter. By cutting the stump 

 close to the ground, and covering with a light furrow on each side, a 

 second growth is obtained in eight or ten years, more valuable than the 

 first. 



Prof. 0. S. Sargent, in speaking of this timber, says : * 



To develop its best qualities the white ash should be planted in a cool, deep, moist, 

 but well-drained soil, where it will make a rapid growth. That the plantation may be 

 as early profitable as possible, the young trees should be inserted in rows three feet 

 apart, the plants being two feet apart in the rows. This would give 7,260 plants to 

 the acre, which should be gradually thinned until 108 trees are l§ft standing, twenty 

 feet apart each way. The first thinning, which might be made at the end of ten 

 years, would give 4,000 hoop-poles, which at present price would be worth $400. 



The remaining thinnings, made at different periods up to twenty-five or thirty 

 years, would produce some three thousand trees more, worth at least three times as 

 much as the first thinnings. Such cuttings would pay all the expenses of planting, 

 the care of the plantation and the interest on the capital invested, and would leave 

 the land covered with trees capable of being turned into money at a moment's notice, 

 or whose value would increase for a hundred years, making no mean inheritance for 

 the idescendants of a Massachusetts farmer. The planting of the white ash as a shade 

 and roadside tree is especially recommended, and for that purpose it ranks, among 

 our native trees, next to the sugar-maple. 



THE PLANTING OF SAND DUNES. 



No application of sylviculture is more important than that of plant- 

 ing on the dunes upon the sea-shore, where, under extraordinary diffi- 

 culties, a forest growth has in many instances been started and main- 

 tained upon drifting sands, and a certain permanent revenue secured from 

 sterile tracts, which, by constant encroachment upon the cultivated 

 country behind them, had done vast injury by burying fertile fields with 

 barren sands. This subject has with us something more than a histori- 

 cal interest, because we have along our coast, as at Cape Cod and other 

 points in Massachusetts, on the shores of Florida, on the Gulf coast, on 

 the whole of the eastern border of Lake Michigan, and at some places 

 on the Pacific coast, tracts of drifting sand that have done local damage, 



^Agriculture of MassachusetU, 1875-76, p. 268. 



