22 
port ant subject, and also that the Union Pacific Bailway is erecting 
preserving works at Omaha, Nebr., for the special purpose of treating 
the soft-woods forties and piling, while the Atchison, Topeka and Santa 
Fe Eoad has established extensive works at Las Vegas, X. Mex., oper- 
ated under the Wellhouse tannin process. * 
The necessity of timber culture. — The satisfactory results of forest-tree 
culture attained by the early settlers of the bleak prairies of the West 
and Northwest have demonstrated beyond a doubt that timber trees, 
so indispensable to the homestead on the treeless plain, as material for 
construction, for fencing, and for fuel, can be raised by each farmer 
willing to devote to them, for the few years of their earliest growth, the 
same care and culture that he is accustomed to give to a crop of corn. 
Tree culture has become a legitimate branch of agriculture, and is 
practiced by every intelligent farmer from the shores of the Arkansas 
Eiver to the northmost prairie of Dakota. Well may it be said that 
in this instance necessity has been the mother of invention, but it has 
likewise been the faithful teacher of arboriculture. 
Belts and groves planted a few decades ago have already furnished 
abundant material for house construction and for the most pressing 
economic wants, lending to the prairie farm a manifest protection from 
the hardships of an open treeless country. 
With these gratifying evidences of success before the public, the 
question suggests itself, why should not railway timber be raised as 
well as wood material needed by the farmer? 
This question has already been extensively agitated, and a few in- 
stances can be pointed out where planting has been actually begun. 
In the majority of cases, however, decisive action has been deferred to 
a more convenient time, which amidst the constant pressure of the 
operating service of the railways has not yet come. The indifference 
of many railroad managers to plans for the preservation of the needed 
timber supply is easily accounted for when the present abundance of 
material is taken into consideration on the one hand, and on the 
other, that the length of time required to grow timber to a size 
suitable for track construction prevents the existing administrations 
from inaugurating enterprises in timber culture the full fruition of which 
is not likely to come during their time of holding the reins of manage- 
ment. The uncertainty of eventual success, owing to the ever-present 
danger of destructive fires, depredations and unlawful acts of the com- 
munity, necessitating an extra service for guarding the forests, is like- 
wise a grave objection to a policy apparently within easy reach and 
control of the great railway corporations, which, as a rule, own large 
tracts of land capable of producing great quantities of timber. 
It is much to be regretted that at the time of the passage of the land- 
grant acts the necessity of an American system of forestry was but lit- 
tle foreseen, as a clause might justly have been inserted in the act, 
* The subject of wood preservation is treated at greater length in Appendix 2 
(p. 66), to which reference may he had for further information. 
