and th&y will b& told that new ones cannot be reared except in the most 

 sheltered places. They will also find some of their favorite apple and pear 

 trees falling before some unseen enemy. 



The Hon. Horace Greeley, in his lecture dellTered at the annual spring ex- 

 hibition of the Brockport, N. Y., TTnion Agricultural Society, speaking on 

 this subject says : " This matter of raising timber needs be better cared for. 

 Taking the forest off has Ifeft our lauds exposed to the bleak and driving 

 winds> and has aggravated the disadvantages of our hot, dry summers, and 

 bleak, cold winters. Lack of forests has narrowed the fruit region, and is- 

 constantly narrowing it. More forests must be raised, and those of the best 

 kinds." So too, within the last ten years the peach and the pear grew in aJl 

 the southern half of the State of Michigan ; but now, when by the destruc- 

 tion of the forests, their ameliorating influence on the climate of the state 

 is lost, the peach trees all over the state have failed, except lipon a nar- 

 row strip under the east shore of lake Michigan. 



T. T. Lyon, Esq., of Jaickson, Miehigan, a veteran pomologist of that 

 state, places this matter in a clear light. In 1864, he said : "The natural 

 resust of this wholesale destruction is manifesting itself in the high winds, 

 the more sudden changes, and the mose extreme cold of our winters. Al- 

 though in consequence of thirstate of ai'ains the peach, once almost as sure 

 throughout our state as the apple, is now, in effect, driven under the lee of 

 lake Michigan ; and although our staple grain crop, wheat, was but two yeacs 

 since almost a total failure from want of shelter and protection, and though 

 we have reason to fear that we have not yet seen the worst,, the process of 

 destruction yet goes on unchecked, and with a strange fatuity. Although 

 the subject is one that deeply coacerns ua all, no measures are being taiken 

 or even seriously contemplated to Stay the growing calamity. 



" Two years since, at a similar meeting, I availed myself of the opportu- 

 nity to urge upon the agriculturalists of the state the importance of action 

 in this matter. During the next winter the wheat crops of the entire state, 

 from the want of the usual covering of snow, and the general lack of shelter 

 from wind and sun, was diminished in amount more than one half — a loss to- 

 the state in a single year of more than 5,000,000 busliels. The present win- 

 ter threatens a repetition of the same calamity ; and with the great breadth 

 of wheat sown, we shall be fortunate if the amount of loss be not essentialy 

 greater than before." 



A committee of the House of Representatives of that state at its last ses- 

 sion reported to that body on the subject of the forest trees, and stated 

 that, last year the loss on all that part of the state lying south of the Michi- 

 gan Central railroad,— a region deprived of the ameliorating influences of 

 Lake Michigan upon the southwest side — and CMoprising the richest agricul- 

 tural portion of the state, was estimated at no less than three-fourths of the 

 entire wheat crop ! From what inquiries they had been able to make, the 

 loss an the wheat crops alone, of that state, for the last four years, is not 



