FOREST CULTURE IN ILLINOIS. 509 



eeedliDgs gathered from American forests in 1866, planted 12 feet apart. They are 6 to 

 10 teet bigh in 1^76. They are tilled with Scotch pine for nurses, with trees grown 

 from seed gathered from trees imported and planted in 1858. They were cultivated 

 till able to protect themselves. 



Scoioh Fine, in close plantations, 4 to 6 feet apart, have a height of £-0 to 25 feet, and 

 a diameter of 6 to 7 inches. When standing separate they have twice th'S diameter, 

 and form a beautiful tree, valuable as a wind-break, and growing surely and rapidly on 

 nearly every variety of soil. They are very hardy. 



Black Austrian Pine grows equally well with the Scotch, and mainly valuable for 

 ornament and wind-breaks. 



Norway Spruce, when planted alone, spreads nearly as wide as it grows in height, 

 forming a beautiful pyramid. The greatest diameter of the trunk of these trees is 15 

 inches, from trees planted in 1857, one foot in height. 



American White Spruce.— Thia is a beautiful tree, equally, if not excelling the Nor- 

 way, and with the same habits. 



American Arhor-vitce (white cedar).— This forma a beautiful tree when young and 

 standing alone, and it may be successfully sheared to any desirable form. It grows 

 slowly, and when planted closely in rows, 6 feet apart, and only one foot in the row, 

 has a diameter of 2 to 4 inches, and 16 feet in height. 



Siberian Arbor-vitce is equally hardy with the American, and grows moi'e compact and 

 beautiful. 



Hemlock, when planted on prairie soil, makes a slow and dwarfish growth, till twelve 

 or titteen years old. It is better on hard soil. 



American Silver Fir (Balsam). — A rapid, beautiful grower, its main value being as an 

 ornamental tree; is less hardy in the extremes of cold following exceedingly severe 

 droughts, as in 1864-'65 ; as in case of the great droughts which then visited this Western 

 country, when a great many of the finest of the balsam trees, many of them 40 feet in 

 height, died. 



European silver fir, — This is too tender for this climate, anJl has only flourished iu 

 protected situations. It has a height of 30 feet, and a diameter of 6 to 7 inches, and 

 should be used only as an ornamental tree. Yet this tree shows early old age, and is 

 less beautiful in twenty or thirty years. 



Experience of tree culture in Illinois. 



Mr. Samuel Edwards, of Mendota, 111., reportiDg from a committee of 

 the State Horticultural Society, iu 187G,i speaks of the condition and 

 prospects of tree-plauting, and of tbe success and failure that has 

 attended tbe experiments hitherto tried : 



For several years the locust used to be the timber tree, and was quite extensively 

 planted ; and when the beautiful groves, on which so many had placed their depend- 

 ence for future fencing, were destroyed by the borer, a general depression came over 

 the minds of tree-planters. For a time their energies for work in this direction were 

 paralyzed, and it is only recently, from observation of the growth and value of a few 

 other varieties of irees as yet successfully cultivated here, confidence in timber-grow- 

 ing is being restored. Many have made small beginnings ; a few are planting exten- 

 sively of black walnut, European larch, ash of ditt'erent varieties, white and Scotch 

 pines, white willow, silver maple and ash-leaved maple; all of which give satisfaction 

 except the silver maple, which is iu some cases troubled with a borer, and limbs are 

 broken in severe stoims. 



Some have advocated extensive planting of the chestnut, and for over twenty years 

 they were thrifty on a prairie mouud, clay soil, with good, natural under-drainage in 

 my grounds. A severe winter succeeding a drought fatally injured one of the two 

 trees set in 1851, and on my ntiw grounds at Mendota, only some 4 feet to a stiff clay, 

 they are very unsatisfactory ; many trees 4 to 6 feet high were killed in the winter of 

 1874-75. The tulip tree for twenty-five years from first planting grow finely. Quite 

 a number on the grounds of Arthur Bryant and Tracy Reeve, at Princeton, aud at 

 " The Evergreens," LamoiJle, failed under the same circumstances as the chestnut 

 The Euglish walnuts grown at La Porte, Ind., were brought to one of the meetings of 

 this society a few years since by W. H. Kagan, with the report that it proved hardy 

 and had borne fruit there several years. 1 tried a second hundred Irom an Eastern 

 nursery ; they have all winterkilled. Doubtless all of these varieties planted on tim- 

 ber soil in the southern and central parts of the State will succeed. It is evident, 

 from past experience, that it will require several years to test varieties of trees before 

 planting extensively on the prairies of our section of country. 



A good beginning is being made in planting trees along the public highways, for 



I Transactions of Illinois Horticultural Society, 187G, p. 115. 



