356 
STATE AGEICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
I traveled quite extensively over this portion of the state 
before and soon after the harvest of that year, and am con¬ 
vinced that one-half of the value of the wheat tind oats in the 
territory passed over by that storm was destroyed by it. 
There were sown in that year, as per census reports, in the 
thirty counties lying north of the Burlington,'Peoria and Lo- 
gansport Eailroad, about one million two hundred thousand 
acres of wheat, and at least one-fourth as many of oats. Al¬ 
lowing one-tenth of these crops to have been protected by 
timber, we find the loss to have been equal to five hundred 
and forty thousand acres of wheat, and one hundred and thir- 
ty thousand acres of oats. 
Computing the wheat at fifteen bushels per acre, and the 
value at fifty cents per bushel; the oats at thirty bushels per 
acre, and price twenty cents per bushel, we have the sum of 
four millions eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars, as the 
cash value of property in these two crops alone, which was de- 
r.troyed in a single storm in an area of a little more than one- 
third of our state. 
Allowing one hundred and fifty thousand acres to have been 
burned, or not harvested, and adding to‘the amount of loss fif¬ 
ty cents per acre of the remainder of the nine-tenths (lodged 
grain), equal to six hundred thousand dollars, it swells the 
amount to the enormous sum of five million four hundred and 
sixty thousand dollars. 
Let us see how much it would cost to plant and cultivate 
screens to prevent such losses. A double row of white or 
golden willows, with trees in the second row set opposite the 
spaces in the first, planted upon the west side of every eighty 
acre lot, would doubtless prove sufficient, as they would, at the 
age of twelve years, form a dense wall of foliage about forty 
feet high, and would of course increase in size for many years 
thereafter. 
These would cost, per mile of screen, about as follows : Av¬ 
erage value of two acres of land, forty dollars per acre, eighty 
dollars ; preparation of the soil, and planting with strong cut¬ 
tings, ten dollars; cultivating the first two years, twenty dol- 
