Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 283]

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277 time, upon widely isolated trees. Evidently the results can not be practically beneficial if diseased trees, not treated, are near by. The disease is very common throughout the country, at least in, the Mississippi valley, and very often badly injures this justly favorite tree on ornamental grounds. Certain specimens appear especially injured, while others nearly or quite escape.

SCOTCH PINE, (Pinns sylvestris).

In the spring of 1871, 1,000 Scotch Pine seedlings one to two feet high were received of Bobert Douglas of Waukegan, and at once set four by four feet apart in the permanent plantation. As an experiment with a hope to reduce the cost ihese set dimgs had been grown without transplanting, and no doubt would have succeeded under favorable circumstances. But the soil becoming very dry and the winds searching and heavy nearly all the young trees died. Not more than two per cent, survived. The next season the enterprising nursery man refilled the order without charge with transplanted seedlings twelve to fifteen inches high, and these were planted as the first lot. Again, owing to unfavorable conditions about two-thirds died, but in the mean time trees were grown in nursery and in 1873 the plantation was completed so that very few vacant spaces remained. Mr. Douglas writes that these trees were from seeds collected in northern Europe and belonged to what is sometimes called the Kiga Pine. This statement is important, for it is well known that Pinus sylvestris is a variable tree and for timber plantations the differences are very great. Having once started, these pines grew very thriftily, soon becoming clothed with dense foliage which retained its fresh and healthful, brueibh-green appearance throughout the year. The branches were from the first spreading and more or less irregular and the trunk itself is often somewhat crooked. Otherwise the trees are well shaped and form a very attractive block in the plantation. They occupy something over one-fourth of an acre. The soil is like that of the dryer portion of the White Pine—good tilable land, rich enough to grow fair crops of corn and in medium condition as regards moisture. Cultivation was continued until 1875, when, instead of plowing, the weeds were cut with the scythe twice a year. In 1878 alternate rows were cut away. Previous to this a few trees had been taken out for transplanting elsewhere. Upon an average the trees now stand about eight feet apart each way, with some irregularity in spacing. The shade is complete. Not a weed may be found save near the open borders of the lot. Mosses and various fungi start from the matted fallen leaves, otherwise the underspace is free from vegetation. The rugged dry limbs from the lower part of the trunk for the most part still hold their places upon the trees; one needs to carefully choose his way to get through the plantation. The trees now (1886, thirteen or fourteen years after planting) average twenty-nine feet high and rather more than twenty-three inches in circumference of trunk one foot above ground. They are larger than the White and the Austrian Pines, but cannot compare with the former in symmetry of form or value of wood.

WHITE PINE, (Pinns strobus.) .

One acre was planted to this well known native tree in a strip of land twenty-five rods long, north and south. This land is quite level,