The anti-monopolist. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1874-1878, 1878-01-10
STRAIGHTFORWARD FOREST CULTURE.
SPEECH OF HON. /. DONNELLY.
OF MINNESOTA.
In the House of Representatives.

SPEECHOE HUN. i. UONNELL1,
OF MINNESOTA.
In the House of Representatives,
July Is, 1868,
Republished by request of Hon.
/. B. Hodges, Hon. E. F. Drake and
others.
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK.
In my own State practical men are
making the experiment and with
marked success,a the following letter
will show:
ELG1N, April 90. 1867.
To the Editors of the Wabasha Herald:
AS you have given, from time to
time, some very good advice to the
people of this county in regard to
planting trees and seeds for timber,
| send you as my experience in plant
ing Maple seeds, the following:
In May, 1866, sent to William
Closson & Son, Prairie Garden, Prairie
City, Illinois, four dollars, for which
they sent me by express one bushel
of soft maple seed. I prepared my
ground as for corn, marking one way
with single shovel plow, three feet
and a half apart, dropped seeds two
inches apart, covered two inches deep.
The trees grew from six to thirty
inches high last season, and are now
looking very finely, having stood the
winter well although not protected.
Seeds Of the soft maple usually
ripen and fall in May, and can be
gothered wherever large maple trees
can be found. There are many places
in Illinois or Pennsylvania where
they can be bought. One should be
careful in planting to avoid places
where the snow drifts on the plants.
Keep clean, and transplant at one
year old, and then cultivate well, and
l have no doubt that in eight years
the trees will be twenty feet high.
Hoping that many of our farmers
will plant out largely and profit
thereby, is my wish.
GEORGE BRYANT.
Iv.-WHAT CAN BE DONE TO sTIMU-
LATE sYLvICULTURE!
Washington Irving said: HE that
plants a tree labors for posterity.'
The sentiment is beautiful one,
but the fact itself has been the great
obstacle to tree-planting.
The present emperor Of France in
his wonderful development of the ma
terial interests of France has not
lost sight of the great question of
syipicutture. A project is now in
execution to border with trees the
principal railroad lines of the nation.
so that while the wealth of the coun-
nn1 fhn M tho lnn1 40
will be improved the trains will run
under one continuous and beautiful
arbOr OF foliage. At the same time
it is proposed to plant largely those
trees upon which the silk-worms feed,
SO as to add immensely to the facili-
ties for the silk manufactures of
France. from which hundreds of
thousands of the French people de-
rive their subsistence. How vastly
does slight exercise of human fore
sight add to the resources and the
happiness of millions
But without foresight nothing can
be achieved. He must be something
of philosopher who plants an or
chard from which he can expect no
returns for six. eight, or ten years.
He must possess still more of the
higher qualities of the mind who will
set out grove from which he Will
derive no income for ten, fifteen, or
twenty years. Yet he who plants an
orchard can hope to add only to the
qualifications of the palate; while he
who helps to dot the landscape with
groves of trees changes the face of
nature, adds enormously to the com.
fort Of mankind, and increases the
area Of the cultivable earth. He
does that which few men are able to
his own existence upon the bosom of
the earth, to stand in stately monu-
mental beauty long after he has gone
back to the dust.
l hope the time is not far distant
when every intelligent farmer in the
sparsely timbered regions of the
West will set out his grove Of FIVE,
ten, or twenty acres, rs regularly as
he sets out his orchard. 1t is our
boast that we Americans are unlike
every other race of the world. and
thatneither nature nor our institutions
can suggest any difficulty which we
NAN INV HoAS W o'SANcAiV. AAShSS " <
have readily and indistinctively
revived the irrigation of Asia
upon the shores of the great basin
and we have brought to the work of
mining for the precious metals in the
mountains of California and Montana
a degree of energy. invention. and
skill unparalleled in any other quar-
ter of the globe.
Shall our great tood-tide of immi-
grafton pause at the border of the
treeless region. or shall it press for.
ward, asking nothing of nature but
soil and climate, and carrying with it
not only the railroad for transporta-
ton but the very forest for p1tec.
toni If the people who settled the
Atlantic States were willing to toll
for a lifetime TO cut out of the dense
forest an opening" for cultivation.
shall not this new race of pioneers
be willing to exact a 1.-THE OF the
labor TO create patch of forest rs
important to them AS the forest
"opening" was to their ancestorsl
We are at the threshold of the
greatest period of immigration eyel
known in the history of the world.
The earliest immigrants To America
were forced away from their home:
by q sublime religious enthusiasm
They chose the wilderness as the,