What is forestry Author:Bernhard Eduard Fernow Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: dissipated as where the winds are checked. Heuce the value of the windbreak which red noes both the evaporation from the soil and the transpiration from the plan... more »t, for transpiration is also accelerated by the motion of the plant under the influence of wind. The hot winds, which are equally as characteristic of this forestless region as the blizzards, sap the moisture out of the soil as well as out of plant, beast, and man, for both are dry. It is summer drought as well as winter drought that we have hero to contend with ; and since at least the hot winds have bceu proved to originate within this very region (see a very full paper on the " llot Winds of the Plains," by George E. Curtis, Kansas State Board of Agriculture, report 1890) and are undoubtedly due to its nakedness, we come to the conclusion that forest cover will not only check the sweep of these winds and thereby the excessive evaporation, but the very cause of these winds may eventually be wiped out. What do we learn from these considerations to help us in forest- planting on the plains T Plainly at least these two propositions : (1) That forest plantations in large, blocks have more chance of success than small clumps of single trees, since large plantations alone are capable of becoming self-sustaining and of improving their conditions of growth by their own influence upon moisture conditions of the soil and air. (2) That we must not only plant densely—much more densely than is the common practice—bat in the selection of kinds give predominance to such as are capable of quickly and persistently shading the ground, creating an undergrowth and cover that will prevent evaporation and thus make the planting of the light-foliaged, quick-growing valuable timbers possible. NEED OP COOPERATIVE ACTION. I can ...« less