VOL. LIII. No. 2334. 
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 20. 1894. 
$x.oo PER YEAR. 
ROBERT DOUGLAS. 
THE FATHKB OF FOREST I’LANTIXG IN THE UNITED STATES 
The subject of this sketch was born at Gateshead, 
County of Durham, in the north of Enfifland, April 
20, 1813, and came to America in the spring of 1830. 
He says th it it was by mere accident that he happened 
to be the first man in this country to commence the 
growing of forest trees as a business, by reading 
Djwning’s work, published in 1850. This work gave 
an account of the Duke of Athol’s planting in Scot¬ 
land, and said that the time might come when forests 
w( uld be planted in this country. As Mr. Douglas had 
made the overland trip to California from Illinois in 
1849, and passed through more forests in the first five 
miles west of Like Michigan than in all the remain¬ 
ing distance to the eastern base of the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains (nearly five months of 
daily traveling), it occurred to him that the 
time had fully come. But he found that for 
several years thereafter, his forest trees went 
to the brush pile. However, he connected 
the growing of apple and pear seedlings with 
tiat of forest tree seedlings, and found that 
they worked very well together, especially 
after the first year of the war, as Eastern 
nurserymen had neglected the growing of 
seedlings, and they grafted two-year seedlings 
at that time, but no yearlings. 
He came East during the third year of the 
war, and made contracts for seeds with cider- 
mill owners and others, who had concluded 
that it did not pay to wash out seeds. He 
says that he sold 50 bushels of apple seeds to 
nurserymen in and around one city in Iowa, 
and large quantities in Illinois, and planted 
50 acres in broad drills. Eastern nurserymen 
laughed at his idea of shipping trees from 
West to East, and especially of his thinking 
of selling one-year-old seedlings for grafting. ^ 
He went to Lockport and paid 82,000 for a ^ 
block of two-year-old apple seedlings, and j 
showed samples of each. The result was 
that in every instance nurserymen took the 
yearlings in preference, at the same price, 
and he could not dispose of the two-year-olds 
until the yearlings were all sold He bought 
1,200 pounds of pear seeds annually for sev¬ 
eral years,, and sold the seedlings readily 
until George Ellwanger told him that, al¬ 
though his seedlings were as fine as the im¬ 
ported seedlings, they never made as good 
trees, so he quit growing them. 
Until about the close of the war, nursery¬ 
men imported evergreen seedlings, and se¬ 
cured the native kinds from the forests. 
Then, as the duty on imported stock, and the 
premium on gold gave them a better chance 
to compete, they commenced experimenting, sow¬ 
ing in beds and shading with sheeting; but this 
was not profitable. Mr. Douglas went to see them, 
and says that these arrangements amused him, for 
he had seen the seedlings growing in the north of 
England withoat shade. So he bought seeds in larger 
quantities, and sowed them by the acre. They came 
up as finely as any he had ever raised, but he did 
not raise a plant, as they all damped off or scorched 
off before autumn. The next year he used frames 
covered with coffee sacks, and they did well, and were 
no great trouble, as the rain went through so that 
they did not need watering ; but the coffee sacks soon 
rotted. Alter that he made lath frames, such as are 
now in common use. But for the past 20 years he 
grows them under a tall shade, that one can walk and 
plow under. It was tedious business to handle acres 
of lath frames. 
After the dutj^ was taken off of imported evergreens 
the sales fell off to a considerable extent, yet many 
of the best Eastern patrons still gave him their 
orders, and he turned his attention more to growing 
transplanted trees. He was started in contract forest 
planting by a party who had bought car-loads of forest 
tries writing that he would discontinue planting, 
but if Mr. D. would take the wild prairie, prepare it, 
and grow the trees until they would shade the ground 
and need no further care, he might make out a con¬ 
tract. This was done, and several other similar con¬ 
tracts were made, so that 1,200 acres (over 3,000,000 
trees) were planted in one county in Kansas, and other 
large plantations in many States. He has been very 
successful in every instance, both North, South, East 
and West. 
Probably there is no man in the country that is 
Robert Douglas. Fig. 175. 
From a photograph taken for The Rukal New-Yohker. 
more respected and loved by a larger number of 
friends and acquaintances. You can’t help loving 
Robert Douglas if you try. To know him is to love 
him. Always modest, unselfish, liberal-minded and 
genial, his long and useful business life is without a 
flaw of reproach. The portrait was taken at our 
request a few weeks ago. It shows his kindly, intel¬ 
lectual face as it is to-day. It is the first portrait he 
has had taken in more than 40 years. 
We can pick out 50 men who have been thought 
great enough to send to the U. S. Senate, whose com¬ 
bined public services have been of less real value to 
this country than the modest work of Robert 
Douglas. " He who plants a tree, plants hope,” 
says the poet, and no one can realize that better 
than he who views the treeless plains of the West, 
and realizes how life has been made more profit¬ 
able and pleasurable by the application of prac* 
tical forestry in these regions. 
IMPROVED CHESTNUT CULTURE. 
A NKW INDUSTRY —WASTE PLACES MiDK GLAD 
[EDITOKIAL COKKESPOXnEXCR.] 
Part I. 
The R. N.-Y. has always stoutly contended that 
American agriculture, from the daj the Pilgrims left 
the Mayfiower, has been but a record of utilizii g 
wastes. The first corn crops grown in New England 
were planted on worn-out soil, with a large fish in 
each hill for manure. From that day to the p'esen^.. 
American farming as it spread toward the West, has 
ever gone through the same performance : exhaust the 
land by continuous cropping and then either run away 
from it “out West,” or make use of manurial sub¬ 
stances that were previously regarded as useless 
wastes. Save the wastes or retreat I That 
has been the alternative, and this question 
of waste-saving has been so well studied and 
practiced, that immigration to the West has 
been almost stopped, while to-day alert E ist- 
ern farmers on the old soil that has given 
crops for more than a century and a half, 
have safely weathered the storm of business 
depression. 
But how about the waste Land ? In every 
neighborhood—on almost every farm east of 
the Ohio River—there are rough and rocky 
hillsides, where, apparently, nothisg hut 
wood will grow. These places are usually 
held at a loss except as they furnish fire-wood 
or timber. It is doubtful if much of this 
timber-land will yield income enough to pay 
taxes—much less interest on the value at 
which the land is held. The object of these 
articles is to describe one of these rocky hill¬ 
sides that has been cheaply utilized for a 
profitable crop. It is waste land turned to 
account. On the hillside so steep, rocky and 
hard that a woodchuck could not burrow 
into it, I saw a crop growing that will in a 
few years yield as much money to the acre as 
a crop of potatoes. This crop requires 
neither plow, cultivator nor harrow—neither 
manure nor fertilizer—nothing but knife and 
brush- scythe. The crop is improved chestnuts. 
There is no fairy tale about this business. 
The hill, the trees, and the man are all to be 
found any day. At Marietta, Pa., close to 
the east bank of the Susquehanna River, lives 
Mr. H. M. Engle, well-known to our readers 
as a good farmer and an expert in nut cul¬ 
ture. On the east side of the river is a gently 
rolling country stretching hack for miles, 
and covered with beautiful farms. Directly 
opposite, on the west bank, steep hills shoot 
up almost directly from the water’s edge. 
This ridge is thickly covered with timber— 
chestnut predominating. The land has never been 
cultivated—nor can it ever be—with ordinary crops, 
being far too rocky and steep for horse or farm tools. 
It must ever remain in forest. As to the value of such 
land, Mr. Engle says that he bought some of it j ast 
before the war at $20 per acre. Now it could prob¬ 
ably be bought for $12. On this hillside I found 20 
acres of Paragon chestnuts—grafted on sprouts from the 
stumps of natives, which were cut off for firewood, or 
posts and rails. None of these trees is over five years 
from the graft, yet with only the older ones in bear¬ 
ing, the estimated yield this year is 75 bushels of nuts. 
To one who can actually see the trees and the way 
they are growing, the possibilities of this nut culture 
are very apparent. 
For over 15 years Mr. Engle has propagated and 
tested the Paragon chestnut. The R. N.-Y. has al¬ 
ready given the story of this nut, and described its 
hekavigr at the Rural Grounds. As to its size, Tkb 
