Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 276]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

268 by frost. The average height is now (1886, autumn,) seventeen and a half feet, and circumference of trunk a little over fourteen inches. This is for six years' growth, or an average of about three feet increase in height per year. Quite a number of the trees, three to five years from planting, have been taken out for transplanting, leaving them, so far as the thinning has gone, eight feet apart each way. The shade is not yet dense enough to keep down all the weeds, but the undergrowth is much less than is the case with the Ash planted ten years before. The ease of propagation, the freedom from disease and injury,, the easy success in transplanting, the wonderful rapidity of growth, the excellent form of the tree and the great value of the wood eminently -distinguish this species as for timber plantations. Its home is upon rich "river bottoms," where the trees attain a height of eighty feet and a diameter of trunk of two to three feet, or equal to that of the White Ash. But on poor soil it is probable that the mature tree will be smaller than several of the oaks and other firstclass forest trees, From such information as we have the tree can not be said to be especially long lived. In the woods they are often found dead and often lying on the ground. Of the proved durability of the wood on or in the ground, too much can hardly be said. Fence posts cut from old logs have remained sound in wet ground forty years, and old stockades have been examined after double this length of time and the wood still found free from decay except the slow wasting away of the surface portions. A log lying across a creek forming a foot-bridge was known by one man to have occupied its place for sixty years, and his information was that at least forty years before his time the log was used for the same purpose. This log was in 1875 cut into boards one inch thick, the widest of which were eighteen inches of sound wood. The outer edges were more or less decayed and worm-eaten. The wood is soft and coarse-grained, is easily worked and keeps its shape well even when cut green. For posts, piles and railroad ties, and for many manufacturing purposes the wood might take high rank, but for fuel and special uses many kinds are superior. (Juniperus Virginiana.) A few trees of this species were planted when about three feet high in the spring of 1871, on rather dry but rich ground. They stand in a single row about ten feet north of blocks of other trees. They have had except for the first year or two but little attention.. The transplanting succeeded well; nearly all the trees lived. They have made a very moderate but steady growth, not, however, appearing very luxuriant or vigorous. The stem usually continues through the head with, however, in numerous cases, competing branches. The head itself is bushy, with close and dense foliage. There is nothing of special promise about them as timber trees on our soil, notwithstanding the recognized value of the wood.

BED CEDAE,

(Castanea vesca.) This has been a failure. In 1871 1,360 two-year-old seedlingswere planted, of which one-half died the first season. But the roots

CHESTNUT,