Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 272]

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£64 These are evidently brought by birds, for it will be noticed that tlie kinds named bear berries or other fruits commonly eaten by birds, or are furnished with appendages by which the seeds or pods adhere to feathers, etc. Great numbers of birds do resort to the plantation for roosting and shelter. The nearest natural wood is about three miles distant. It is difficult to state what the average size of these trees is, on account of the extreme variation in size. By leaving out the small and ever-to-be worthless ones, an approximate average size may be stated as forty-one feet for height and a little less than nineteen inches for the circumference of the trunk. In some portions of the plantation, however, the average height is ten feet less. Let it be recalled that the seedlings were two to three years old when planted, and that the trees have now grown where they are fifteen years. The trunks are straight, tall and slender, and either entirely or nearly free from living branches for almost half their height. Owing to the peculiar development of the trees, the distribution i& also irregular, wide spaces occurring without valuable specimens,, and again a few good trees growing side by side. At the end of the first year after planting, the three-year-old trees cost at the rate of $160 per acre,while the plantation of twoyear-old seedlings cost $85—the difference coming from the greater original cost of the three-year-did seedlings and the greater labor in handling them. It requires at least twice the labor to properly plant a three-year-old tree of this kind than it does one a year younger. At the present time no difference can be discerned in the size of the trees. (Juglans nigra.) The nuts were planted in the spring of 1869, in nursery. There is, by some inadvertence, a break in the records concerning the transplanting of these trees, and I have been unable to recall the facts connected therewith. They were not transferred until after 1872, but in the autumn of 1875 they were over nine feet in height, and had been growing vigorously in their permanent place. When transplanted—probably in the spring of 1873—quite a number died, as might be expected of this variety, at four years of age. They were put into rows four feet apart, two feet in the row, but the following, year were distributed so as to make, as nearly as practicable, the distance in the row uniformly four feet. They occupy one-fourth of an acre alongside of the Butternuts, on soil of good quality for corn. In the autumn of 1876 these trees were twelve feet high and exceedingly healthy and vigorous in appearance. They were fairly well cultivated, and the lower branches were trimmed off so as to leave a smooth trunk four or five feet high, but since 1878 no labor has been expended upon them. At this time (1886) the trees are thirty-seven feet high and twenty-five and a half inches in circumference of the trunk. . T h e y are making rapid growth, with straight, clean stems and fairly good amount of foliage. The latter, however, is by no means so abundant as in several other species. There is

BLACK WALNUT,