OSAGE HEDGES.

The cost of fences is a great burden upon agriculture everywhere. In the prairie sections, where stone is never available, and timber rarely at hand, the expense is increased; and here the feasibility of obtaining serviceable live fences is naturally an important inquiry. Western farmers have long been seeking the best plant for this purpose. In the climate of Great Britain the hawthorn (Cratagus oxyacantha) has been successfully employed for centuries; but, in the climate of the Mississippi Valley, it is not sufficiently at home to answer the purpose; the atmosphere is too hot, dry, and variable. The honey locust, (Gleditschia triacanthos,) has been tried, as also the buckthorn, (Rhamnus catharticus,) the Cherokee rose, (Rosa lævigata,) and others; but the Osage orange thorn, (Maclura aurantiaca,) after years of experiment, in different parts of the country, appears to be a more promising material for hedges than any other upon which experiments have been made. It was called by the French Bois d'are; by the Indians, bow-wood; and Osage orange by the present inhabitants of the West. In 1841 it was thus described by William Kenrick:

"A native of Arkansas, where it rises in beautiful proportion to the height of sixty feet, and has been pronounced one of the most beautiful of our native trees. The wood is, perhaps, the most durable in the world, and for ship-building is esteemed preferable to live-oak. It is valuable for furniture, as it receives the finest polish, and yields a yellow dye. It is remarkably tough, strong, and elastic, and preferred by the Indians to all other woods for bows. It deserves a trial for hedges. I know of no wood so beautiful for this purpose."

A few facts in the history of its introduction and use in the West, as a hedge plant, are stated upon the authority of Hon. M. L. Dunlap, of Illinois. In 1842 a nurseryman of Peoria County, Illinois, Mr. Edson Harkness, after a trial during two seasons, in which it was killed to the roots by frost, came to the erroneous conclusion that it would not stand the climate. In 1844 Mr. Charles H. Larrabee, of Pontotoc County, Mississippi, sent a package of seed to the editor of the Prairie Farmer, suggesting its probable utility as a hedge plant, and its great value to Illinois especially. In 1845 Professor J. B. Turner, of Jacksonville, Illinois, stated that it had proved hardy for six years, and that he thought it would make a good hedge, if the plants would bear close planting.

It is claimed that a Mr. Choteau, of St. Louis, planted Osage seed as early as 1800. The elder Landreth propagated some plants in 1803, which are now two feet in diameter, and thirty to forty in height. Mr Hancock, of Fulton County, Illinois, set a hedge in 1844. It was not till 1846 that any considerable quantity of seed was sent North. Mr. William II. Mann, then a resident of Fannin County, Texas, living upon Bois d'Are Creek, hearing that the seed was worth eighty dollars per bushel at Cincinnati and in the northwest, proceeded to wash out thirty bushels of seed, for which he refused twenty dollars per bushel before starting, only to meet the disappointment, on arrival at Peoria, of learning that there was no demand for it, the impression having gone abroad that it was a failure. After some effort and delay, it was distributed in small lots,

upon a year's credit, at twenty dollars per bushel. The late Cyrus Overman, of Fulton County, entered into a copartnership with Mr. Mann in planting a few bushels of the seed, and from this beginning the growing of Osage thorn plants has assumed its present proportions. In 1851 three to five hundred bushels of seed were brought into Illinois, and in 1855 the firm above named brought from Texas one thousand bushels. Prior to 1860 the price varied with the demand from five to thirty dollars per bushel. In 1867 the trade in seed was resumed with a speculative demand, by which the market became overstocked, and the price was reduced from fifty to five dollars. In 1868 the trade amounted to eighteen thousand bushels. The price, eight dollars at first, went up to fifty. During the winter of 1868-69, twelve thousand bushels went north of Memphis, ten thousand of which have been sold for the spring planting. The price ranged from twelve to eighteen dollars. Texas and Arkansas received not less than one hundred thousand dollars for Osage seed in the autumn of 1868.

It is estimated that ten thousand bushels of seed will be planted in the northwest in 1869, producing 300,000,000 plants, at 30,000 to a bushel of seed, and making 60,000 miles of fence, allowing 5,000 plants to a mile-enough to supply 22,000 farms of a quarter-section, at 840 rods to a farm. One nurseryman has four hundred acres of quicks growing.

Mr. Dunlap thus figures the comparative cost of live and of dead fences:

First year:

To prepare the hedge-row for a mile of hedge will cost in labor

about five cents a rod, equal to

5,000 plants ..

Setting.

Cutting and hoeing.

Total...

Second year:

Cultivating and hoeing.

Resetting of plants

Third year:

Cultivating and hoeing ..

Totals..

Total cost for three years, twenty-five cents per rod.

$16 00

12.00

4.00

16.00

48.00

16.00

4.00

12.00

80 00

The next two years it will cost nothing, and will then be ready for plashing, or it may stand a year or two longer. We may add ten cents a rod for plashing and trimming, where the hedge will need an annual shearing, at a cost of about two cents a rod. This is in case the hedge is to be kept within bounds; but in many cases, where it is also valuable for shelter and for timber, this extra expense is not incurred. Such a fence, when ten years old, will be worth its full cost to be cut down for vineyard stakes, or similar use.

The first ten years of a first-class hedge should not cost a farmer, including interest for three years while it is growing, over fifty cents a

rod, and the most of this in labor at odd times. This would make the hedging of the quarter-section farm cost, for twenty years, as follows:

The difference for the first twenty years is $120 per annum, and thus, instead of having $1,000 invested as original capital, we have but $420 in the hedge. It will require, at least, ten per cent. to keep the dead fence in repair, while $17 for each farm will keep the hedge nicely sheared. In one case we have a reliable hedge, and in the other an uncertain one of pine boards.

The following communication on the subject of Osage thorn hedges, received from Mr. J. W. Clarke, of Kingston, Greene Lake County, Wisconsin, is presented as the result of much thought and experiment, but not indorsed by the Department as infallible in all its positions:

THE OSAGE THORN.

Though this thorn has been variously and extensively experimented with, probably through half a century of time, with a view to its adaptability to forming a live fence, its successful propagation and growth on a large scale by nurserymen is a work of but recent achievement. The urgent necessity of some hedging material, as a substitute for board fence, has also been deeply felt only within a few years, or since railroads have made such fearful inroads upon the limited timber supply of the country. It is, however, a well established fact that the Osage thorn is quite as capable of being grown and trained, and of forming an effective live fence, in all but far northern States, as is the hawthorn in the British Islands. Its adaptation to the general purposes of hedging being a settled fact, the following notes and suggestions will be directed to the practical bearings of the principles of growing, plans of arrangement, and the most suitable methods of training or directing the growth of the Osage thorn, as a hedging plant.

NURSERYMEN PROPAGATE IT WITH SUCCESS.

Of this there can be no doubt, as it is thus grown in Illinois to the extent of hundreds of acres, and on an amply successful scale in various other localities. It must be stated, however, that the quicks are grown too thick in the nursery row, in many instances. Close crowding here is not favorable to the best growth of roots, which is as essential to Osage thorn quicks as to apple stocks, and as necessary to their best subsequent growth in the hedge row. The plants are more healthy when first grown on high, or at least on well-drained ground; the whole extent of their wood growth being firmer, and, if sometimes not quite so large or rank, better adapted to bear the vicissitudes to which young hedges are usually exposed.