At present, the furious winds which sweep over the plains, the droughts of summer, and the rights and abuses of pasturage, constitute very formidable obstacles to the employment of measures which have been attended with so valuable results on the sand-wastes of France and Germany. The Russian Government has, however, attempted the wooding of the steppes, and there are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of Odessa, where the soil is of a particularly loose and sandy character. The tree best suited to this locality, and, as there is good reason to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the Ailanthus glandulosa, or Japan varnish-tree. The remarkable success which has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at Odessa, will, no doubt, stimulate to similar trials elsewhere, and it seems not improbable that the arundo and the maritime pine, which have fixed so many thousand acres of drifting sands in Western Europe, will be, partially at leaat, superseded by the tamarisk and the varnish-tree.
According to Hohenstein, Der Wald, pp. 228, 229, an extensive plantation of pines—a tree new to Southern Russia—was commenced in 1842, on the barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisabethgrod, and has met with very flattering success. Other experiments in sylviculture at different points on the steppes promise valuable results.] In any case the question will now be subjected to a practical test, and the plantations are so extensive, and, as is reported, so thrifty in growth, that one generation will suffice to determine with certainty and precision how far climate is affected by clothing with wood a vast territory naturally destitute of that protection.
I have thus far spoken only of the preservation and training of existing woods, not of the planting of new forests, because European experience, to which alone we can appeal, is conversant only with conditions so different from those of our own climate, soil, and arboreal vegetation, that precedents drawn from it cannot be relied upon as entirely safe rules for our guidance in that branch of rural economy. [Footnote: Many valuable suggestions on this subject will be found in Bryant, Forest Trees, chap. vi. et seqq.]
I apprehend that one rule, which is certainly alike applicable to both sides of the Atlantic—that, namely, of the absolute exclusion of domestic quadrupeds from all woods, old or young, not destined for the axe—would be least likely to be observed in our practice. The need of shade for cattle, and our inveterate habits in this respect, are much more serious obstacles to compliance with this precept than any inherent difficulty in the thing itself; for there is no good reason why our cattle may not be kept out of our woods as well as out of our wheatfields. When forest-planting is earnestly and perseveringly practised, means of overcoming this difficulty will be found, and our husbandry will be modified to meet the exigency.
The best general advice that can be offered, in the want of an experimental code, is to make every plantation consist of a great variety of trees, and this not only because nature favors a diversified forest-crop, but because the chances of success among a multitude of species are far greater than if we confine ourselves to one or two.
It will doubtless be found that in our scorching summer, especially on bare plains, shade for young plants is even more necessary than in most parts of Europe, and hence a fair proportion of rapidly growing trees and shrubs, even if themselves of little intrinsic value, ought to be regarded as an indispensable feature in every young plantation. These trees should be of species which bear a full supply of air and light, and therefore, in the order of nature, precede those which are of greater value for the permanent wood; and it would be a prudent measure to seed the ground with a stock of such plants, a year or two before sowing or transplanting the more valuable varieties.
More specific rules than these cannot at present well be given, but very brief experiments, even if not in all respects wisely conducted, will suffice to determine the main question: whether in a given locality this or that particular tree can advantageously be propagated or introduced. The special processes of arboriculture suited to the ends of the planter may be gathered partly from cautious imitation of European practice, and partly from an experience which, though not pronouncing definitively in a single season, will, nevertheless, suggest appropriate methods of planting and training the wood within a period not disproportioned to the importance of the object. [Footnote: For very judicious suggestions on experiments in sylviculture, see the Rev. Frederick Starr's remarkable paper on the American Forests in the Transactions of the Agricultural Society for -.]
The growth of arboreal vegetation is comparatively slow, and we are often told that, though he who buries an acorn may hope to see it shoot up to a miniature resemblance of the majestic tree which shall shade his remote descendants, yet the longest life hardly embraces the seedtime and the harvest of a forest. The planter of a wood, it is said, must be actuated by higher motives than those of an investment, the profits of which consist in direct pecuniary gain to himself or even to his posterity; for if, in rare cases, an artificial forest may, in a generation or two, more than repay its original cost, still, in general, the value of its timber will not return the capital expended and the interest accrued. [Footnote: According to Clave (Etudes, p. 159), the net revenue from the forests of the state in France, making no allowance for interest on the capital represented by the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it is about the same, though the cost of administration is twice as much as in France; in Wurtemberg it is about a dollar an acre; and in Prussia, where half the income is consumed in the expenses of administration, it sinks to less than half a dollar. This low rate in Prussia and other German states is partly explained by the fact that a considerable proportion of the annual product of the wood is either conceded to persons claiming prescriptive rights, or sold, at a very small price, to the poor. Taking into account the capital invested in forest-land, and adding interest upon it, Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with a view to felling it when eighty years old, would yield one-eighth of one per cent. annual profit; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one-sixth of one per cent.; a beech wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one-fourth of one per cent. The same author gives the net income of the New Forest in England, over and above expenses, interest not computed, at twenty-five cents per acre only. In America, where no expense is bestowed upon the woods, the value of the annual growth has generally been estimated much higher. Forest-trees are often planted in Europe for what may be called an early crop. Thus in Germany acorns are sown and the young seedlings cultivated like ordinary field-vegetables, and cut at the age of a very few years for the sake of the bark and young twigs used by tanners. In England, trees are grown at the rate of two thousand to the acre, and cut for props in the mines at the diameter of a few inches. Plantations for hoop-poles, and other special purposes requiring small timber, would, no doubt, often prove high remunerative.] But the modern improved methods of sylviculture show vastly more favorable financial results; and when we consider the immense collateral advantages derived from the presence of the forest, the terrible evils necessarily resulting from its destruction, we cannot but admit that the preservation of existing woods, and the more costly extension and creation of them where they have been unduly reduced or have never existed, are among the plainest dictates of self-interest and most obvious of the duties which this age owes to those that are to come after it.
Financial Results of Forest Plantation.
Upon the whole, I am persuaded that the financial statistics which are found in French and German authors, as the results of European experience in forest economy, present the question under a too unfavorable aspect; and therefore these calculations ought not to discourage landed proprietors from making experiments on this subject. These statistics apply to woods whose present condition is, in an eminent degree, the effect of previous long-continued mismanagement; and there is much reason to believe that in the propitious climate of the United States new plantations, regulated substantially according to the methods of De Courval, Chambrelent, and Chevandier, and accompanied with the introduction of exotic trees, as, for example, the Australian caruarina and eucalyptus [Footnote: Although the eucalyptus thrives admirably in Algeria—where it attains a height of from fifty to sixty feet, and a diameter of fifteen or sixteen inches, in six years from the seed—and in some restricted localities in Southern Europe, it will not bear the winters even of Florence, and consequently cannot be expected to flourish in any part of the United States except the extreme South and California. The writer of a somewhat enthusiastic article on this latter State, in Harper's Monthly for July, 1872, affirms that he saw a eucalyptus "eight years from a small cutting, which was seventy-five feet in height, and two feet and a half in diameter at the base."