IV. EXPERIENCES IN TREE PLANTING ON DAKOTA PLAINS. 
[The two communications which are here appended were received 
from two correspondents of the division, who have had some experience 
in tree planting on the prairies of Dakota. While it will be found that 
some of their statements and deductions are not, at least in their gen- 
eral application, in harmony with the preceding representations, they 
are nevertheless given in full just as they were written, and will be found 
interesting as giving brief and, on the whole, safe detailed directions 
which may well supplement the preceding general considerations. | 
1, TREE CULTURE ON THE WESTERN PLAINS, 
By A. M. THoMson. 
I am asked to give the results of my observation and experience in tree culture dur- 
ing aresidence of 6 yearsin North Dakota. I assume that what the Department wants . 
is such knowledge of practical experiments made on the ground as will aid the sett_er 
on these wind-swept prairies in starting and maintaining a grove of trees that will 
afford him protection in winter, and ultimately fuel and timber for domestic pur- 
poses. 
While scientific men are seeking for the causes that prevented the natural growth 
of timber on the barren plains of the West, the hardy pioneer who has gone there 
with his family to stay and to help on the development of the country and the sta- 
bility of the Government by making a home is much more interested in the impor- 
tant question, ‘‘ How can I raise. trees to supply my wants?” Any man who can 
state a single fact which will throw a ray of light on the general subject will confer 
a lasting benefit upon tens of thousands of farmers beyond the Mississippi River who 
have been trying for years tosolve this problem without any satisfactory results thus 
far. 
THE TREE-CULTURE LAW. 
It is an open secret that the tree-culture act, now repealed, has almost totally 
failed to meet the expectations ofits authors; that not one claimant in a hundred in 
the two Dakotas, and the remark will hold good equally well when applied to other 
Western States, has ever succeeded in raising trees, and that it has simply been made 
the convenient and lawful cover for speculation in government lands by both resi- 
dents and nonresidents. Both the law and the speculator were to blame for this 
result. 
The Government offered the settler 160 acres of land for doing precisely what any 
thrifty man on the prairies would naturally do on his own motion, though perhaps on 
a smaller scale, the cultivation of a grove of trees for shade, shelter, ornament, and 
use; but the defects of the law are so numerous that the liberality and good inten- 
tions of Congress have utterly failed to accomplish any good result, ne 
