25 
tion of the lower Michigan peninsula, the supply is diminishing to 
such an extent that there is already a keen competition on the part 
of the Western manufacturers of agricultural implements, resulting in 
an advance in price of from $12 per thousand a few years since to , 
$34 per thousand feet in the Milwaukee and Chicago markets, with 
the prospect of a speedy advance to near or quite the present value 
in Eastern markets. 
The leaves of the Ash make their appearance later in Spring than 
many other valuable kinds of deciduous trees, and therefore prolongs 
the planting season, and as the plants when handled and transplanted 
with ordinary care are subject to little or no danger of loss, and as 
the wood can be used of smaller size for many purposes, and as the 
plants may be set much closer than many other kinds of trees, ren- 
ders the Ash valuable and indispensable for such plantations and 
belts as are planted in soils suited to its growth. 
According to Sargent’s estimate, if the trees are planted in 
“ rows three feet wide and two feet apart in the row, it will 
require 7','26o plants to the acre, and the first thfnnings at the end of 
ten years will yield 4,000 hoop poles, which at present prices will 
yield §400 per acre. The subsequent thinnings made at different 
periods for twenty-five or thirty years — reducing the number of trees 
to 108 per acre — would be worth at least three times as much more, 
a sum amply sufficient to reimburse all expenditures in making and 
careing for the plantation, taxes and interest upon the investment.” 
The absolute certainty of a demand for Ash wood, at a much larger 
average annual profit than results from any farm product, should induce 
the planting of the Ash upon hundreds of thousandsof the many millions 
of acres of deep, moist and rich lands in the States of the Valley of the 
Mississippi River and its tributaries, containing all the elements neces- 
sary for the best growth and quality of wood. These States, by virtue 
of their location in the geographical center of the nation and of the 
North American continent, are — if land owners will grasp the 
opportunity — not only able to grow sufficient Ash to supply the con- 
tinental demand at a profit to the individual producer, but also to 
centralize the location of the manufacturing establishments that use 
the wood of the Ash largely in the construction of implements and 
machines. 
Black Walnut and Hickory. 
In planting tree-belts of considerable width, or plantations of con- 
siderable extent, a suitable admixture of these valuable kinds of trees, 
in soils suited to the growth of the White Ash, will materially reduce 
• the cost of the plantation, and should not be omitted. The nuts are 
usually at hand in the forest in most localities, or may be purchased 
at a small cost, and are easily germinated by planting as soon as gath- 
ered in the fall, or packed in moist earth or sand for spring planting. 
The seed may be sown at intervals, at the time of setting the White 
Ash plants, in furrows 4 or 5 inches deep. 
