252 PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 
The Illinois Central Railway made careful investigations in regard to 
prospects of obtaining cross-ties by planting Catalpa trees and decided to 
make some experiments. A tract of 200 acres: at Harahan, La., eight miles 
from New Orleans, was selected and 110,000 trees were planted in spring of 
1902. They are now twenty-five feet in height. This location was an old 
sugar and rice plantation. The trees were planted to correspond with the 
peculiar method of laying out sugar land in this low alluvial country. The sugar 
rows are seven feet apart, on ridges, deep furrows between the rows carry off 
the water. The trees were planted on alternate ridges, being fourteen feet 
apart, and seven feet distant between trees. 
DECAY OF THE CATALPA. 
Discarding all scientific explanations a little common sense will show 
why a tree, the wood of which is so extremely durable, often decays while it 
is growing. As shown by the chemical analysis of Catalpa wood, there are 
antiseptic substances gathered from the soil and built into the tissues of the 
wood which resist the action of those fungii which cause decay. While the 
tree is full of sap and these resinous and oleaginous materials are greatly 
diluted, they have not such resistive powers as when concentrated and have 
dried or become fixed in the wood, as when so fixed they can only be dissolved 
with alcohol or other powerful dilutent. Water will not dissolve them. 
It is a peculiarity of the Catalpa that the dead branches remain on the 
tree for many years, each annual growth enclosing them. Gradually these 
branches admit air and moisture bearing germs of decay which attack the 
diluted sap, and a rotten heart is the result. A wound made at the time of 
flowing sap does not heal quickly, while in winter the same wound dries and 
with next season’s growth it becomes covered with new wood. 
Posts made from young timber, if cut while full of sap, decay sooner than 
those cut after cessation of flow. 
Well matured wood, thoroughly dried, and even young trees well sea- 
soned are remarkably durable—in other words resist decay. 
Catalpa speciosa trees in the forest show little symptoms of disease or decay. 
SUMMARY OF THE CATALPA SITUATION. 
From thirty years’ study of the Catalpa speciosa as an economic tree, 
making a thorough examination of the various plantations of the United 
States, investigating conditions under which this tree is growing in almost 
every state, and thoroughly searching the remaining forests in which the 
Catalpa is indigenous, my conclusions differ verv materially in many important 
particulars from those expressed in the recent publication of the U. S. Forestry 
Bureau. 
(1) First in importance, and a point ignored in the authoritative Govern- 
ment Report, is the absolute necessity of securing good and true seed of 
Catalpa speciosa. Otherwise there can only be dismal failure. 
(2) No trees succeed as well on poor soil as on that of good quality, and 
it is economy to plant on land of fair fertility, if one has a choice of locality. 
(3) With the best of soil, under the most favorable conditions of climate, 
