Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 279]

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271 soft that a horse's feet would sink three or four inches in the black and rather mucky soil. The seedlings were one year old when planted in the spring of 1871. During the first year three-fourths of these died, and more upon the high than upon the low ground. All started well, but the roots were badly damaged by the white grub-worm, and the season proved to be very dry, so that during August the dead or dying numbered more than the thrifty trees. Cultivation was diligently kept up during the summer. The next spring 4,000 more seedlings were purchased and planted in the rows, leaving no spaces of more than four feet. In this way the distribution of the trees was not quite even over the ground, but proved sufficiently so to accomplish the object of thick planting. Again the grub-worm did some damage to the roots, but far less than during the preceding season; none was known of afterwards. Nearly all the trees lived and made a fair growth. Cultivation was kept up during the summer of 1872, 1873 and 1874, but in 1875 the land was so wet during the spring and early summer that it was deemed best not to run the plows. The weeds grew abundantly and made a bad appearance, but they did not seem to materially injure the growth of the trees. At the end of this season, however, it was observed that the trees occupying the wettest portions of the ground looked unhealthy and many were found entirely dead the following spring (1876). Up to this time they had apparently done nearly as well on the low as upon the higher land. Finding that the trees, now five years planted, needed thinning where two feet apart, a considerable number were dug and planted in the vacant spaces, wherever they occurred, including those on the wet ground. Most of these transplanted trees lived and grew without serious check, but from this time on those o n t ^ e low ground proved more or less unhealthy. Some of them lived to grow ten to sixteen feet high, and then perished. On this ground the trees which lived had less than the normal amount of foliage, the latter was usually yellowish in tint, the branches were slender and wiry, and fruit-cones were abundantly developed. While there are still a considerable number of trees on this lower ground still living, the plantation is anything but attractive or hopeful in appearance. On the higher ground, however, scarcely a tree has died or shown any indication of unhealthfulness. In 1876 part of the work was done in the spring and part in the fall. The trees in two of the central rows were trimmed by cutting off the lower branches so as to leave a clean trunk two and a half to three feet high. The rest of the trees were left untrimmed, with their branches issuing from very near the ground and spreading so as to interlace with each other. The average height of the trees was at this time ten feet. These trimmed rows can not now be picked out, except upon the closest looking for the few remaining dead branches on those not trimmed, and an occasional appearance of the old wounds. But during three succeeding years the growth in height of the trimmed trees was evidently less, and no doubt careful measurements would have shown a similar result for the circumference of the trunks. Unfortunately such measurements were not made. NowT the variation in growth in other ways obscure the results, if any. The trimming of the two rows cost about fifteen dollars—money clearly wasted, if nothing further can be said of it.