PEACTICAL PAPEES—TIMBEE GEOWING. 357 
lars; making a total cost, with purchase money ot the land, 
one hundred and ten dollars. After two years no care will be 
needed, save a mulch of refuse straw, to be renewed once in 
two or three years, the cost of which will be more than repaid 
in the partial protection which the trees will render previous 
to the twelfth year. 
There are, in the thirty counties referred to, about sixteen 
thousand six hundred and twenty-five sections of prairie land. 
This will require sixty-six thousand five hundred miles of 
screen, if planted as above proposed, making the entire cost 
seven million three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. 
Thus we see that, without estimating the immense damage 
done to fruit and other crops, the wheat and oats destroyed in 
that storm would, if saved, have paid about three-fourths the 
entire expense of growing timber belts throughout that entire 
territory ? 
I think it may be safely estimated that an average of one- 
twelfth part of all our erops of grain and large fruits are de¬ 
stroyed by violent winds, which such a system of protection 
or its equivalent in groves, would so far check as to prevent 
the destruction. If this is true, such protection would save to 
the husbandmen and orchardists its entire cost every two, or, 
at most, three years. Such protection, too, would, by causing 
the snow to remain spread evenly over the surface of the 
ground, as before hinted, enable the farmer to raise winter 
wheat in localities where it is now impossible to do so. 
If we add to the benefits of tree culture already considered, 
those far-reaching aini incalculably valuable climatic influ¬ 
ences which would flow therefrom, we must all admit the 
necessity of commencing this great enterprise at once, and pros¬ 
ecuting it with vigor. 
I do not introduce this plan of planting straight belts of 
trees, a quarter of a mile apart, because it is the most desirable 
plan which can be adopted, for no man of taste would regard 
it as such. The eye would soon tire of such* stiffness and 
monotony in the landscape. 
Tree planting may be so planned and conducted as to give 
