DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 59 



THE BOTANIC GARDEN. 



The area of two acres has been slightly increased by grading and fill- 

 ing on the bank below where plants have been grown. This new area 

 will be devoted to samples of grasses which were given up in the area 

 near the boiler house. Any new area broken up and planted to a mis- 

 cellaneous variety can be cheapest and most satisfactorily cultivated for 

 the first five or six years, but after that the plants here and there begin 

 to fail or dwindle in size. Some of them will become troubled with fungi 

 or insects or both. The plants should then be shifted to other places, 

 the soil much enriched, or the old soil removed and other soil put in its 

 place. With a very small area devoted to each species, it seems in most 

 cases of little use to attempt spraying. Gooseberries and currants and 

 roses and a few others may be sprayed to advantage. 



THE ARBORETUM AND THE COLLEGE FOREST. 



Last winter labor was high and very scarce. Two men worked most 

 of the winter cutting stove wood and three-foot wood in the woods north 

 of the Pere Marquette; stove wood at 50 cents, and three-foot wood at 

 60 cents per cord. The College teams charged 30 cents per hour for haul- 

 ing. There were cut 485 cords of stove wood and 85 cords of three-foot 

 wood. 



A few loads of logs of sled length were drawn and sold to neighbors. 

 Two quarts of sprouting chestnuts were planted in open places this spring 

 in the lot between the railroads. One Sunday in May when the leaves were 

 very dry some one set them on fire in the lot south of the river — the west half 

 south side. This killed considerable of the small growth, the size of one's 

 thumb and smaller. On pleasant Sundays there are a good many strolling 

 through the woods, some of whom are sure to be smokers. Foreman 

 Blair, aided by several others, stopped the fire after some damage was 

 done. 



The pines in the extreme east wood lot up the river have done well 

 where the soil was good, some of them last summer and the year before 

 shooting up a leader two-feet nine inches each year. Some of the trees 

 are now over twelve feet high. This spring a single row of year-old box 

 elders was planted east and west between each two rows of white pine. 

 These will spread and keep down the grass and crowd the pines to keep 

 off the lower limbs and induce the trees to grow tall. 



North of these pines a piece of river bottom one hundred and twenty 

 square rods in extent was plowed last fall. This spring it was planted 

 to a mixture of trees about four feet each way, mostly silver maples, box 

 elders, basswoods, with a smaller number of arbor-vitae, balsam fir, hem- 

 lock, Norway spruce, white spruce, red cedar, larch, white pine. They 

 have been cultivated one way like rows of corn. The small arboretum 

 remains as it was last year, excepting the growth of trees. 



