ON PLANTING. 233 
NURSES. 
“ Nurses are surplus trees or shrubs introduced into the 
plantation for a temporary purpose, for the occupancy 
of the ground, to shelter and protect the permanent 
plants that are designed to constitute the future forest, 
and to aid in forming them into well-shaped trees as 
well as for their use as subsidiary products. 
“The trees, shrubs, or bushes selected for use as nurses 
should not so greatly exceed in size and vigor the perma- 
nent trees as to endanger the growth of the plants de- 
signed for the future forest; they need to be looked 
after lest they crowd and injure those trees which are 
to form the permanent stock. This is especially neces- 
sary if they be free-growing—such as many of the kinds 
grown in this country. Hence, for the purpose of nurses, 
we should select trees which are of the second class in 
respect to size. Of the many in use as nurses to differ- 
ent species of trees, the cotton-wood, box-elder, hack- 
berry, white maple, elms, green ash, and white willow 
are the most easily obtained or produced, and in cases 
where the first cost of the young trees is small, the nurse- 
plants may consist of supernumeraries of the species 
planted. 
“Shrubs may be utilized as nurses if set in alternate 
rows and cultivated with the trees, and may be brought 
into requisition as a source of profit in use as wattles for 
temporary fences, as osiers, hoops, hurdles, and hazels or 
filberts, for their nuts. Wherever labor could be con- 
trolled for the cutting and preparation of the crop of 
herbage, so useful now for tanning, the sumac would 
promise a valuable return. Many of the smaller-grow- 
ing osier willows might be planted in the same way, 
with prospect of yielding good returns. They may all 
be grown from cuttings, that should be planted at the 
same time as the trees—the latter, being put into rows 
eight feet apart, could have a double row of the willows 
10* 
