PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 381 
trees would mature. Only a few soft-wooded and little-valued trees, soft maples, 
box elder, cottonwood, etc., have been planted to any extent, while the more valu- 
able woods, oak, pine, cypress, walnut, hickory, etc., which require from seventy to 
six hundred years to reach merchantable condition, have been almost totally neg- 
lected. 
Americans are migratory. Few old established estates exist. We in America 
have not yet learned the lessons which the European nations have practiced for 
centuries—that of making the forests a perpetual source of income. 
By proving to the world the valuable character of Catalpa speciosa, and in the 
distribution of seeds and trees, the International Society of Arboriculture has 
been instrumental in creating an interest, and secured the planting of many 
thousands of acres of forest, which could not have been accomplished other- 
wise. 
