PRACTICAL PAPERS—TIMBER GROWIISTG. 355 
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growth of trees. The land is valued at forty dollars per acre, 
with interest upon this amount, togther with expenses, com¬ 
puted as before,* at six per cent, compound interest. 
I take ten acres in these estimates of growing artificial 
groves, because it is desirable to have trees enough together, 
or in close proximity, that the cost of putting up and remov¬ 
ing a saw mill would be but a trifle upon each thousand feet of 
lumber sawed. 
TIMBER BELTS. 
The actual profits which would accrue from a general and 
uniform system of cultivating trees in belts, or double rows, 
for protection, cannot as readily be estimated ; yet no one who 
has carefully investigated this subject can doubt the utility and 
economy of such screens. To show the possible extent of their 
beneficial influence, I will call up an instance which, proba¬ 
bly, very many of this audience willyemember. 
In the year 1862, at the time when spring wheat and oats, 
in the northern portion of the state were just past the bloom, 
and a portion of the grains in the milky state, we were visited 
by a storm from the northwest, which swept over this portion 
of the state, prostrating nearly all the grain not sheltered by 
timber. 
I have selected this instance as an illustration, because of 
the extent of the storm, and also on account of the marked 
effects of protection by timber in this storm, which clearly 
showed that the entire loss might have been prevented by 
belts of trees. In one locality a single line of broad and tall 
willows, closely planted, proved a sufficient check to the wind, 
so that a field of wheat adjoining it upon the east stood erect, 
and was harvested with a machine, while in exposed situations, 
the shrunken grain, if saved at all, was often gathered by the 
slow and tedious process of hooking it up with scythes. 
Many thousands of acres were left to dry, and were burned 
upon the ground, which two or three weeks before harvest 
promised abundant crops. The extra expense of gathering 
the grain of that harvest could not have been less than fifty 
cents per acre on the whole amount harvested. 
