109 



" First', the original, sod stoul^ be broken and turned over in thin, evenly-laid strips. 

 When completed, a good breaking will appear, like a vast floor of well-laid two-inch 

 plank, painted with lamp-black. Then plant and cultivate, not to see liow much you can 

 manage, but how well. Then come trees ; walnuts, cottonwoods, willows, mulberries, and 

 elm will make the home seem civilized. Tree-planting is an avocation that barbarians 

 never follow. Indians never adorn their wigwams with orchards, nor indulge in flori- 

 culture. There is no record of an aboriginal horticulturist in any book I have read or 

 heard of anywhere. It may seem a long time to raise a saw-log from the walnut which 

 lies in the palm of your hand, but the rain and frost of winter and the sunshine of 

 summer, together with the fertile and forcing soil of Nebraska, crowd a walnut into the 

 dimensions of a respectable saw-log in less than twenty-five years. Upon a farm where 

 I have lived, in Otoe County, for more than twenty years, one may see black walnut 

 trees which will make good railroad ties, and some which will do to saw up, which I 

 planted with my own hands. . . . And again there may be found cottonwood 

 sawlogs growing there which are more than six feet in girth, and when I first saw them 

 they were only wandering germs, floating in the air, like down from a bird's breast. But 

 they are adult sawlogs in 1876. These remarks, somewhat egotistical though they may 

 be, are made for the purpose merely of impressing you, and through you the farming 

 people, with the tree-possibilities of this State, and I only preach in this regard what 

 I have faithfully put in practice, and the witnesses of the truth of my theories stand 

 majestically verifying me all over the farm whence this is written to you, in the form of 

 beautiful, thrifty, and valuable fruit and forest trees. Come down and see them, and in 

 the hot summer days, while you rest in their shade, even their foliage will tell you in 

 whispering with the wind how pleasant and profitable a thing it is to plant the prairie 

 with trees." 



The following shows in how short a time firewood may be procured from the planting 

 of trees : — 



"Twenty years ago cordwood sold in Nebraska city for seven or eight and sometimes 

 ten dollars a cord, and that, too, when her population was not one-fifth what it is now ; 

 and notwithstanding the demand for fuel is at least ten times greater now than in 1857, 

 it is a fact that good merchantable wood can be bought in our streets for from $3.50 to 

 four dollars per cord. The reason of this is simply from the fact that the natural groves 

 have been protected from fire, and the artificial groves are turning out an abundance of 

 good wood, such as the necessities of the country demand for fuel. It will agreeably sur- 

 prise any one not acquainted with the fact to know the amount of timber one acre of land 

 will produce in the course of ten years. Mr. Richard Justice, who came here (Otoe 

 County) in 1857, and planted about ten acres of cottonwood in 1859, has one or two out- 

 houses built from hewed logs taken from that grove, and the family have all the fuel they 

 need. Hundreds of such cases might be mentioned throughout the eastern portion of the 

 State, did space permit." 



Mr. George Stanton, of Simcoe, Ont., writing to the Hon. H. G. Joly, says : — 



"You know that this Long Point country was a great black walnut district, and 

 on the Lake Shore there are still quite a few trees left. I have measured to-day, some 

 five trees, and got their ages as near as I can, relying on what the owners have told me. 

 The first tree that I saw, measured five feet eight inches, four feet from the ground, and 

 is twenty-four years old ; it is growing on very rich black sandy loam. 



" The second measures five feet four inches, three feet from the ground, is thirty 

 years old, on very light sand. The third and fourth measure twenty-three and one-half 

 and twenty-four and one-half inches respectively, three feet from the ground, and both 

 are eleven years old, on good clay ground, but were transplanted when young. The age 

 of these trees the gentleman told me he was sure of. 



" Number five measures seven feet eight inches, five feet above the ground, is fifty- 

 five years old ; this tree is on very light sandy soil. I mean in all the measurements, the 

 circumference of the trees. 



