280 PROTECTION OF HUMAN LIFE: BARRIER AGAINST INSECTS. 



Jiuljre C. E, Whiting, of Monona County, Iowa, in reporting to the 

 State Horticultural Society in 1876 (p. 150), mentioned that he had on his 

 farm of 1,800 acres about 40 acres of timber in belts around his fields, 

 varying from single rows to 20 rows, and of different ages from 18 years 

 down to 1 ; but mostly from 5 to 12 years. In regard to the influence 

 of these belts on the growth of crops, he says : 



As my groves increase in height, I still find that the visible inflnence of this pro- 

 tection — with almost mathematical precision — anionnts to one rod on the ground to 

 one foot height of the tree. Whether from cause or from accident, I will not pretend 

 to say, but leave it for the entomologist to decide — I record, that during the great 

 grasshopper visitations of 1873 and 1876, all my fields surrounded by timber escaped 

 almost wholly uninjured. The same was true of the farms opened in our Missouri 

 bottom timl>er. Will Professor Bessey please inform us if a Colorado locust, with an 

 eye to beauty and utility, respects a field surrounded by green growing trees? We 

 know from long experience that the summer storms, the early frosts, and the fierce, 

 unrelenting winter blizzards do pass these fields by uninjured and unscathed, and why 

 should not a locust as well? I would make no material change in my order of plant- 

 ing; on our treeless prairies, where timber is wanted quick for fuel, shelter, and other 

 ]>urpo8<'S, the Cottonwood, in my estimation, still stands king among all our native 

 trees. I am now using my round cottonwood po^ts cut from my young thrifty-grow- 

 ing trees, peeled, seasoned, and the posts set in the ground, boiled a fow minutes each 

 in coal-tar, at au expense of about one cent each, that bid fair to outlast oak not so 

 treated. Maple, willow, ash, and walnut should follow in the order named, the latter 

 to be planted on the deepest soils. 



Need of wind-breaks for the protection of human life. 



A winter seldom passes without deaths from storms on the prairies 

 of the Northwest. Mr. James T. Mott, in an article on timber culture 

 in the Iowa Horticultural Report of 1872 (p. 109), atter 17 years' resi- 

 dence in Iowa, says: 



I have many times wondered how it could be that people were so easily lost in these 

 storms; why it was that a man in good health, strong in limb, and well clothed, could 

 not go a few rods from his house to the barn, to care for his stock, without danger of 

 death; why whole sleigh-loads of people were frozen to death within a hundred rods 

 of dwillings, and this in the same location where I was living. But lately it has been 

 my fortune (or I thought at the time misfortune) to be caught in one of these storms 

 in Minnesota ; and it took only a short time for me to see through the whole thing. I 

 felt the wind first blowing softly from the south ; in 30 minutes, it changed to a fierce 

 gale from the west, bringing with it a bank of snow that would crrapare to the rush 

 of water as the flood-gates are opened in a mill-race, and with a force that no man or 

 team could travel against it a mile, as steady as in a bellows run by machinery, being 

 filled with snow as tine as the finest dust, and so thick one could not see 10 feet, tilling 

 the eyes and nostrils of man and bevst. The storm lasted three days, * * • and 

 the news is of hundreds dead; people frozen in stage-coaches, whole sleigh-loads re- 

 turning home from town, men standing dead with hand on the stable-door latch, 

 others that saved themselves by bnrrowing in snow banks — little children lost going 

 home from school, passengers in railroad-cars two days without food, <&c. » » » 

 More people have been frozen within the last year, in Northwest Iowa and West Min- 

 nesota, than were ever murdered by the Indians in those counties since their settle- 

 ment. * » » The people are now petitioning their legislatures for some kind of 

 ])rotection from these storms, asking that wire fences and storm-houses be built along 

 the traveled roads — asking them to do something for their safety. I see none that 

 would do but timber-planting. It alone would stop these terrible winds, modify the 

 climate, and furnish land-marks for the traveler. 



Screens of icoodland as a harrier against the progress of insects. 



The Hon. J. G. Knapp, of Madison, Wis., in a lecture delivered at the 

 university course at Kockford, 111., in February, 1870, notices the intlu- 

 enee of forests in intercepting the progress of insects and the spread of 

 contagious and destructive fungi. He sajs : 



The chinch-bug of the prairies was lately as much dreaded by those who knew their 

 ravages . . . . , but these can never traverse a belt of thick woods seven or eight 

 rods in width to devastate an adjoining field. The cool damp soil and shade of such 

 a belt inesents an impassable barrier to their march, the same as to the grasshopper. 



