A TREATISE ON THE PROPAGATION, PLANTING, AND CULTIVA-
TION, WITH A DESCRIPTION, AND THE BOTANICAL
AND POPULAR NAMES OF ALL THE

Indigenous Trees of the United States,

BOTH EVERGREEN AND DECIDUOUS, TOGETHER WITH NOTES ON
A LARGE NUMBER OF THE MOST

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by the

ORANGE JUDD COMPANY,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE.

The preface of a book is usually considered the proper place for an author to give his reasons for writing it. Following the usual custom in this matter, I may say that I am a son of a carpenter, who followed the business of building bridges, barns, houses, and similar structures, and my earliest recollections take me back to the time when I spent many an hour in the shop, twirling and unrolling the long, silky pine and whitewood shavings, and at these times I heard discussions almost daily in regard to wood, timber, trees, their quality, value, and variety. My father also owned a farm in the heavily wooded regions of Western New York, and he highly appreciated the value of certain kinds of trees growing thereon, for his practiced eye would measure the size of a hewn stick of timber that could be made from a giant oak, beech, or cther kind of tree as it stood in the forest, as well as make a very close guess as to the number of feet of boards or plank that could be produced from the great white-woods, hemlocks, or pines, of those regions. Brought up amid such surroundings, and early taught to use tools and work in wood myself, it was but natural that I should take an interest in Forestry, and endeavor to learn something of the value of trees and forests.

A few years later, or in the summer of 1846, I spent several weeks in the great pine forests of Eastern Michigan, commencing at Port Huron, at the foot of Lake Huron, thence travelling northward to the Straits of Mackinaw. This extensive region was at that time an almost unbroken wilderness, although there were a few saw-mills scattered here and there along the lake shore, or in the bays, that afforded a good harbor for the small vessels engaged in transporting lumber. The mills at Port Huron, Saginaw, Thunder Bay, and a few other places were kept running, but they made only a slight impression upon the surrounding forests, and it was often asserted at that day, that the pine forests of Michigan were simply inexhausti