Convention upon the subject of railroads, their construction, management, and the legislation necessary to regulate the rates charged by railroads and other carriers.

The resolution was adopted,and the following committee appointed by the Chair:

D. McMillan of Greene, John M. Millikin of Butler, Judge T. C. Jones of Delaware, Alphonso Hart of Portage and R. C. Thompson of Lucas. Mr. John Hussey, of Loveland, read the following paper on

FOREST DISTRIBUTION.

In order to maintain the soil in the highest state of fertility in any country, there should be maintained a certain proportion between the forests and the cleared land. The situation of each country would be an important element, however, in determining that proportion; in some countries about one-fifth, in others, less humid, as much as onethird has been thought not too much. If in any country in continental Europe it is considered that one-third of its surface should be covered with forests, there is no place in this country west of the Allegheny mountains where the proportion should be less. When the country was first settled, an unbroken forest extended over the greater part of its surface east of the Mississippi river. The first business of the settler was to cut down and burn up the trees-a work of incredible labor. We cannot now criticize this occupation of the early settler-for if the forest had been left standing, he must have lived by the chase like the wild Indian. We may, however, believe that the habit of destroying trees carried the settler and his sons a little too far. We can see, whether they could or not, that in some instances a little more judgment might have been exercised, both in what they destroyed and in what they saved. All can agree in this, the work of destroying should now give place to that of preserving and restoring. You, gentlemen of the State Board of Agriculture, have made a good beginning, in the publication of Mr. Millikin's paper, which is able and appropriate, and will have a good influence wherever read. I shall not go over the same ground, and by seeking a less trodden path shall, I fear, be less interesting.

NATURAL DISTRIBUTION OF OUR FOREST TREES.

There is still some doubt as to the exact boundaries of many of our species. A more extended and exact survey of the botany of our State is needed before the limits of our species can be accurately determined. I have made out a list of the trees and shrubs found in the State which attain more than about twenty feet in hight. The list may be incomplete; some trees or shrubs may grow in small numbers in some sections which have not come under my observation.

The influences which control the distribution of forest trees are those which operate the most on the young plants. Some trees that grow well on a given soil after they have passed beyond the early stages of growth are not able to withstand the influences which surround them at first. We have observed how seldom we happen upon certain trees in the early stages of growth in our forests. Upon the freshly raised railroad embankment, we look in vain for incipient forests of oak and hickory, but find instead the buttonwood (Platanus occidentalis), whose seeds, appendaged with hairs, and abundant on all our water-courses, where railroads usually run, are easily transported by the currents of air produced by the motion of the cars, and in fact independently of this agency become widely disseminated. The young plant of this very common tree has a vigorous growth, and is soon beyond many of the dangers which threaten its young existence

We shall also find on the new embankment the young plants of the sugar tree and the honey locust. The young plants of these species will survive in circumstances in which the majority of our forest seedlings would utterly perish. But protected for one or two seasons, the various species of oaks, the hickories, indeed any of our forest trees, and many not found in our forests, will grow thriftily. When we consider all the opposing influences, the extremes of our seasons, the dangers from insect and beast, the dense shade which destroys one species, the exposure to the blazing sun which is fatal to another, the seed, borne on the wind, which would have flourished had it fallen on a northern exposure, falling in a southern exposure perishes before it has begun an independent existence, we may well wonder that so many have succeeded. Such influences as would not at all interfere unfavorably with many of our forest trees, when they have secured a firm hold upon the soil, will be fatal to them the first year or two of their existence. We know how certain trees indicate the character of the soil, so that we can determine what is underneath the surface by the growth upon it. We do not find a bed of gravel beneath a grove of black gum, nor the hard-pan at the roots of the buttonwood or black walnut. We find one oak in the edge of the swamp, another on the second bottom, another on the clayey loam, another with the sour gum on the flat craw-fish land, another still on the sandy loam, or with the chestnut in the sandstones of the hills. The chestnut just mentioned follows the line of the sandstone no nicely that we consider it to belong to a sandy or porous soil; yet, with a good start, this tree will grow in our yellow drift clays, though not very vigorously. I know of a chestnut tree which was planted in clay soil in 1846 which is hardly twenty feet high to-day, and has never ripened a seed. On the other hand, chestnut trees which have grown in sandstone regions, at twenty-five or thirty years of age, are used for telegraph poles, and measure thirty feet in length, and are no less than four or five inches in diameter at the small end. There is an apparent exception to the remark that the chestnut requires a sandy soil. Some of these trees are found growing thriftily on our drift gravel and clay, but especially where sand and gravel constitute the principal ingredient of the soil. There are several large chestnut trees in the south-western part of the State, whose size shows them to have antedated the settlements of the whites in those regions. The most remarkable instance is that of the "chestnut grove" at Pisgah Church, in Butler county, where trees are found four feet in diameter, and bear an abundance of fruit. A large primitive chestnut tree may be seen on a drift hill near the town of Camp Dennison, in Hamilton county. But many trees are not like the chestnut in this respect, but will thrive equally well in different soils if they are protected when young and tender, and yet only find the conditions in which they can survive the first year or two in particular situations. The white elm undoubtedly prefers a moist situation, and yet it is found in south-western Ohio on both northern and southern exposures on our hill-sides, on soils formed from the original Silurian deposits; the same tree and the Luttonwood also mark, in other parts of the State, the line of outcrop of certain strata high up our hills, as in eastern Ohio-strata which disintegrate into a soil which retains moisture well. These hill-sides become exceedingly dry, especially in south-western Ohio, during the latter part of summer, but the elm and button wood both grow vigorously when young, and are both very tenacious of life, and live and thrive where others would perish. We notice that each species has a certain measure of vitality peculiar to itself, and each differs from all the rest. A young plant of one species will thrive where one of a different species will not. The conditions favorable to one of a species are favorable to many of the same species, but the conditions most favorable to any one species may not be favorable to any of another species. A marked preponderance of trees of any one species growing in any region, shows not that the soil and

other conditions of tree-growth are fitted only to maintain the mature trees, but that the conditions were such, also, that the young plants, in their weakest condition, were able to maintain the struggle for existence.

Forests composed of individuals of a single species give evidence of a period when they were young, in which everything was favorable to them in their weakest condition. The common impression that the elements in the soil are suited to sustain a certain class of trees, and unsuitable to sustain others, is erroneous. The same soil will nourish other species than those found growing upon it if they once get rooted there. The distribution of trees depends largely, in limited areas, upon the fact that in some situations the circumstances favor the young plants of one species more than of others. Where windstorms have prostrated the primitive growth of a forest, and others have sprung up spontaneously to replace them, we shall observe that a different proportion will exist in the species which have grown up in the storm-track than in the original forest. The new growth will consist mostly of a single species, or at most of a few species, requiring the same conditions of early growth. It is not because the condition of the soil has been changed, or that certain elements had become exhausted or new ones added, that a new generation of trees will grow before some others, which border each side of the path, will again take their places in it. Storm-tracks of a former time can be traced in the new growths which replaced the old. In Shelby county you will be pointed to a wind-fall, a clear-cut track of a tempest, which is now occupied largely by the aspen and cottonwood in an entirely different proportion from that which the same species hold in the adjoining forest. In another part of the State the track of another wind-fall is traced by a growth of black walnut. In each case, trees of the species which sprung up in the path of the storm were to be found on the borders, and it is possible that the action of the wind in the storm helped to scatter the seed. The seed being at hand, those trees maintained themselves which were most favored by the conditions of the first few succeeding seasons; others, a little more tardy in development or less favored in the first stages of growth, failed to maintain themselves. In the course of time, other species find that protection which their early stages require, and become intermingled in due proportion. In the same manner we may seek explanation of the growth, in limited areas, as in some portions of Clinton and other counties in the State, where one species of the tree, as the beech, or some one species of the oak, hold almost exclusive possession of the ground. Some portions of Fayette county, and those adjoining on the north and east, have a very limited number of species, mostly of certain oaks. This condition of the forest indicates that at no very distant period in the past, measuring time by the generations of trees, large tracts of this portion of the State were treeless, and the trees which now exist there, or which the settlers found there, were, if not the first, yet among the first which sprung up. In confirmation of this view is adduced the following observation: A large number of the oaks have two or more trunks from the same stock. Persons who have felled these trees, cutting them off a little below the point of bifurcation, report finding a thin line of charred wood near the center. The explanation is that the young trees were exposed to the ravages of the often recurring prairie fires, and were burned off a little above the ground. The stumps sprouted and produced the compound trunk so commonly observed. The charred summit of the original sapling was overgrown and finally concealed within. The tendency is rather to a multiplication than to a simplification of our forest trees. The early settlers in Jackson and Pike counties gathered up the undecayed fat-wood pine knots and hearts, and obtained tar from them in places where none or but few pine trees were then growing upon the soil. But these pine knots, or the straggling pine trees, were the remnants of perhaps a pine

forest which once covered the whole region. There are districts, none perhaps within the limits of our own State, where, from peculiarities of soil or climate, certain species will grow exclusive of others, and will be succeeded by individuals of their own species. The sandy tracts of the pine regions of Michigan, and the belt of sandy pine land along the Atlantic and Gulf coast, may be succeeded by the species which now occupy the soil, or by others nearly allied to them. It, however, more usually happens that a forest of a variety of species will succeed a forest of a uniform species. Trees of a more delicate character in the early stages of growth will grow up in the shade and protection of those more hardy and thrifty in infancy which at first occupied the soil. Unless in the exceptions referred to, and these may be more apparent than real, we believe the conclusion is justified by observed facts, that where a district is held by a single species, or by a few species, it is to be inferred that the primitive forest holds possession of the soil, that the first or nearly the first generation of trees still exists upon the soil, and that in the course of time the seeds of other trees will become scattered there and grow up in the protection of the existing forest. In this way comes about that variety which we see in our forests, a variety which does not find the conditions it requires in a treeless region. Comparing the forest growth in our own State, we have seen in the sandstone regions, for example, of Jackson county, the relics or the remnants of a remote forest of pine disappearing. In accordance with the foregoing remarks, we find some of the most ancient trees of other species existing in such regions, and we find there too, as might be expected, a great variety of species. On the other hand, in such counties as Fayette, Madison and others, we observe a paucity of species of large trees; we find few or no trees of as great an age. The less variety of soil and exposure in these level counties

does not wholly account for the difference. But whatever cause operated to make the more level land in our State or elsewhere treeless, it did not and does not operate to produce the same result in regions considerably broken. Even if broken aud level lands become treeless, the former will have fewer difficulties to contend with in replacing those trees than the latter. In the broken region, many species will find at once the conditions of growth they require, while in the plain, drought, severe cold, sweeping winds, and, not least, fire, successfully combat the attempts of arborescent vegetation to establish itself. In the condition and variety of the trees in our forests, we can read something of the history of the past. Where the variety is extensive, the ages of some of the trees are very great, we infer that the time is very remote when the ancestors of the present generation of trees took hold on the soil. But in those districts in which the variety of species is very limited, and their size does not in general point to a very remote time of origin, our conclusion is that they are the primitive forest of the region, that they have succeeded, not trees, but herbaceous plants. In some instances, portions of the original prairie remain; in others, the great uniformity, both in size and species, where are lacking indications of prairie, show that the present forest occupies the limited area of some destructive conflagration, or the more circumscribed track of some wind-storm, or even the fields or clearings of an early race of inhabitants.

The origin of prairies is a pertinent inquiry in this connection. How may a region become treeless? A deficiency of moisture may produce the result, connected with other causes. What other causes? I shall illustrate my views by referring to the wide-spread devastations of the measuring worms during the past few years. It has been a very difficult matter to find a whole leaf on many of our forest trees during the past two summers. Every one was eaten and riddled by the worms. Not a leaf could be found in midsummer on a beach, oak or white elm, or on many other trees, which had anything more than the mere skeleton left. The leaf is essential to the life and growth of a tree.

The material is prepared for the nourishment of the plant by the offices of the leaf. A white elm was nipped of two successive crops of young leaves by untimely frosts in the same spring, and perished. All the material which had been accumulated was consumed, and it perished. For some cause, there has been a great increase in those species called measuring worms within a few years. The seasons, the mildness and dryness of the winters, especially the two preceding the present, have, perhaps, made conditions favorable for them to multiply. The effect of their ravages is to weaken the constitution of the trees, where they do not even kill them outright. The trees become diseased and a prey to other insect enemies. After a few seasons, if these ravages are kept up, they are liable to perish. Now, if a succession of very dry summers and extremely cold winters intervenes, on account of their weakened constitutions they must succumb. A sweeping conflagration will do the rest of the work of desolation. A succession of fires will keep down the work of reparation. Roots and seeds perish utterly. The destruction of the forest is succeeded by extremes of temperature and drouth. We know that the soil will support trees if placed in it and protected. It is not the soil, it is not altogether the climate-only plant and protect your planting, and all is well. But ages may pass ere a forest, planted by the hand of nature, will possess the soil. The conditions, so uniform over a level or rolling surface, do not exist for the growth, spontaneously, of trees in the early stages; but protected from the severities of climatic influence and from fire, a forest will soon exist. We do not see sandy tracts treeless unless there is a deficiency of moisture. As the former seas have shrunken and left wide bands of sandy coast, forests have followed closely. Take an instance in the great pine belt of the Atlantic and Gulf coast-the seeds being supplied, the absence of the grasses so liable to be burned, or the absence of those who would set them on fire, and the vigorous growth of the young plants, settle the question.

It will thus be seen that numerous circumstances determine the distribution of trees. Aside from heat and cold-not a very important consideration in such a limited area as the State of Ohio-there are to be kept in view some peculiarities of soil relating to retention of moisture and to constituents in some degree, and the presence or absence of those conditions favorable to the life of an infant tree in the first year or two of its ex· istence.

The natural province of any one species is that district in which the plant is found growing wild, planted by the hand of nature. This province is far more limited in extent than is that region in which it will grow if cared for in its tender infancy. We see plants growing everywhere thriftily where they would not grow without attention by man in their early stages. Many trees do not produce ripe seed on the borders of their own natural province-or only occasionally and not abundantly. As an instance illustrating this statement, I will mention the black locust. This tree, in all parts of our State, produces ripe seed in great abundance, while on the north-eastern border of its province it seldom ripens its seed. Trees scarcely hardy at first, by habit become so, and ripen their seed and perpetuate themselves We cannot now tell how much human agency in the past has been at work transferring plants from one place to another. It is well known that all the plants perfectly adapted to the climate and other conditions of a country, have not, during the ample opportunities of indefinite ages, sprung up in that country.

In regard to the cultivation of forest trees in the broad plains west of the Mississippi river, we cannot say with certainty how much of that great region is capable or incapable of sustaining them. While it is quite probable that certain species would not, at present, grow there, it is equally probable that certain others would. The common