Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1870-03-02
FARMER GREELEY.
HeUrges the Planting OF Trees Ne.
cause 1t VIII Pay.

From the New York Tribune.]
am not at all sentimental-much less
spooney-regarding the destruction of
trees. Descended from several genera
tons of timber cutters (for my paternal
ancestors came to America in l610) and
myself engaged for three years in land
clearing, realize that trees exist for use
rather than for ornament, and have no
scruple as to cutting grass in meadow
Utility is the reason and end of all vege-
table growth-of hickory's no less than
a cornstalk's. have always considered
"Woodman, spare that tree, just about
the most mawkish bit of badly versified
prose in our language, and never could
guess how it should touch the sensibilities
of any one. Understand, then, that l
urge the planting of trees mainly because
I believeit will pay, and the preservation,
improvement, and extension OF forests
for precisely that reason. ~ 70 flrvf
Yet am not insensible to the beauty
and grace lent by woods, and groves, and
clumps or rows of trees, to the landscape
they diversity, / feel the force of Emer-
sons averment, that beauty is its own
excuse for being, and know that home
stead embowered in, belted by stately,
graceful elms, naples and evergreens, is
really worth more, and will sell for more,
than if it,were naked field and meadow.
| consider it one positive advantage Ito
balance many disadvantages Of our
rocky, hilly, rugged eastern country, that
it will never, in all probability, be so
denuded of forests as the rich, facile
prairies and swales of the Great Valley
may be. Our winds are less piercing
our tornadoes less destructive than those
of the Great West. i doubt whether
there is another equal area of the earth s
surface whereon so many kinds of valua-
BILE trees grew spontaneously and rapidly,
defying eradication, as throughout New
England and on either slope of the Ale
ghenies, and this profusion of timber and
foliage may well atone for, or may be
fairly weighed against, many deficiencies
and drawbacks. The Yankee who has
been accustomed to see trees spring up
spontaneously wherever they were not
kept down by ak or plow or scythe, and
to cross running water every half mile of
summer days journey, may well be
made homesick by two thousand miles of
naked, dusty, wind-swept plains, whereon
he finds no water for fifty to hundred
miles, and knows it impossible to cut an
ax-helve, much more an axle-tree, in the
course of wearying journey. No East
ern farmer ever realized the blessedness
of abundant and excellent wood and
water until he had wandered far from his
boydhoods home. b9a
No one may yet be able tofully explain
the inter-dependence of these two bless
ings; but the fact remains. All over the
Plains there is evidence that trees grew
and hourished where none are now found,
and that springs and streams we're then
frequent and abiding where none now ex-
list. A prominent citizen of Nevada, who
explored southwark from Austin to the
Colorado, assured me that his party trav-
eled for days in the bed of what had once
been q considerable river, but in which
it was evident no water had flowed for
years. And have heard that, since the
Mormons have planted trees over con-
siderable sections of Utah, rains in sum
mer are no longer rare, and Salt Lake
evinces, by a constant though moderate
increase of her volume of waters, that the
equilibrium Of rainfall with evaporation
in the Great Basin has been fully restored
-or rather that the rainfall is now
taking the lead, XXI.
i have firm faith that all the great
deserts of the Temperate and Torrid
Zones will yet be reclaimed by irrigation
and tree-planting. The bill which Con-
gress did not pass, nor really consider,
whereby it was proposed, some years
since, to give a section of the woodless
public lands remote from settlements to
every one who, in separate township,
would plant and cherish quarter-section
of choice forest trees, ought TO have been
passed-with notifications, perhaps, but
preserving the central idea. Had ten
thousand quarter-sections in so many
different townships of the plains been
thus planted in timber ten or twenty
pears ago, and protected from fire and
devastation till now, the value of those
plains for settlement would have been
nearly or quite doubled. -r'-'.
A capital mistake, it seems to me, IS
being made by some of the dairy farmers
of our own State One who has hun
dred acres Of good sol, whereof twenty
or thirty are wooded, chs off his timber
entirely, calculating that the additional
grass that be may grow in its stead viii
pay for all the coal he needs for fuel SO
that be will make net gain Of the time
be has hitherto devoted each winter 10
cutting and hauling wood. He does not
consider how much his soil will lose in
summer moisture. how bis springs and
runnels will be dried up, nor how the
sweep Of harsh winds viii be intensified,
by barring his hilltops and rayines 70 sun
and breeze so utterly. IN my deliberate
judgment, farm Of one hundred acres
will yield more feed, with far greater
uniformity Of product from year to year,
If twenty acres Of It's Fidge-crestsy rayine-
sides, aud rocky places, are thickiy COW
cred timber. than II il be swept clean Of
trees and al devoted 70 grass. Hence, |
insis. that the farmer who sweeps Of bis
wood aud rsso,sg 70 depend on coal for
fuel, hoping TO Increase perssrentiy the
product Of his dairy, makes = sad ris-
calculation.