122 USE OF WOOD IN PAPER-MAKING. 



road, and a tree-planting department was next organized.' It waa placed under the 

 charge of Hon. Leonard 13. Hodges, of Saint Paul, who proceeded to Olmsted County 

 and bought half a million white-willow cuttings, at §2.50 per thousand. Teams and 

 plows were started two days in advance of the planting parties, to prepare the ground 

 for the cuttings, and after plowing and harrowing until mellowed as much as might 

 be, the cuttings were set, between April 23 and May 23, 1373, as deep as they could be 

 Btuck, and in isolated tracts from Swede Grove to Breckinridge Flats, a distance of 

 over a hundred miles. The grass and weeds came up with the young willows, and 

 required much care to keep down. 



In June and the first days of July 500 acres were broken for future tree-planting, in 

 strips parallel with the road, and on each side of the track, two strips on each side, 

 the first eight to sixteen feet wide, with the right-of-way line in the middle, and from 

 one hundred to oue hundred and fifty feet farther back, another strip on each side 25 

 feet wide. 



In September the ground around the rows of trees planted that season was mowed 

 and grass burned to protect from accidental fires. On the 12th of October, 1873, com- 

 menced planting white-ash seed on some of the ground between Willmar and Saint 

 John, and by the time the ground froze enough had been planted for a million and 

 a half of trees. 



Financial matters, lawsuits, and other circumstances embarrassed operations the 

 next spring, biit 115,000 white willows, Lombardy andcottonwood cuttings, were set, 

 and ash ami box-elder seed for two millions of trees planted. In the mean time 20,000 

 European larch plants, two years old, 110,000 plants two and three years old, and 

 50,000 willow cuttings were obtained from nurserymen, and set, and seeds for some 

 millionsof box-elder, ash, white, black, red, burr; and jack oaks, butternuts and sugar- 

 maples, were planted in the fall. The ash seed planted in the fall of 1873 came up 

 with scarcely a failure, and grew twelve to twenty inches. The ash and box-elder 

 sowed in the spring of 1874 had done equally well. At the end of 1874, over half a 

 million of the wliite-willow cuttings set in 1873 stood from six to fourteen feet high, 

 and were already of perceptible use as wind-breaks, and an equal number of cuttings 

 were got, by thinning these rows, for future planting, leaving as many more that 

 might be taken. The result of two years' planting was about four million youug 

 forest trees, in a treeless region. The example of these operations did much to eu- 

 courage planting by settlors. The great want of cheap cuttings and trees had been 

 met by the company, and plantations of 30,000 and 40,000 trees were made on farms, 

 the enhanced value of lands thus improved presenting a strong inducement for exteu- 

 eive operation.* 



THE USE OF WOOD IN PAPEEMAKING. 



This industry has in recent years acquired great importance, and is 

 rapidly increasing, both in Europe and America. It is more than eighty 

 years since a paper-mill in Fairhaven, Yt., made wrapping-paper from 

 basswood-bark, and about fifty years since Cyprian Prosper Brard, of 

 Frejus, in France, invented a mode of making paper from wood. 



From this time down to the present, numerous patents have been 

 granted, both in the United States and abroad, for reducing wood fiber 

 to pulp suitable for paper. Without following these in detail, we will 

 remark, that there are two general methods now in use — the chemical 

 and the mechanical. 



By the chemical process, the wood is cut into chips, then boiled in a 



' The snow-blockades in the winters of 1871-72 and 1872-'73, and especially the great 

 storm of January 7, 8, 9, 1873, ever memorable on account of its extent and destruc- 

 tive force, and the misery and death which it occasioned, furnished the most convinc- 

 ing arguoieuts in favor of some elfectual means for breaking the force of these storms, 

 and the most urgent motives for the early and adequate plauting of wind-breaks. 



* Transactions of Minnesota Horticultural Society, January, 1875, p. 51, in a report made 

 by the Hon. Leonard B. Hodges. It is extremely to be regretted that a change in con- 

 trol and a short-sighted scheme of economy has interrupted these labors, and wholly 

 stopped further operations. Meanwhile, the abandoned plantations, choked with 

 weeds and grass, and overrun by fires, present a sad prospect, and, what is worse, the 

 settlers seeing the enterprise abandoned after so much exj)enditure, think that there 

 is something wrong in this attempt at cultivation or the company would have con- 

 tinued it. They are therefore discouraged from planting, from fear of failure, and the 

 whole country along the line is suffering in this interest from this reaction. 



