THE SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 



403 



A correspondent of the New York Tribune gives another view. It is always 

 safe to hear botli sides. He says : 



Many articles have appeared lately in agricultural papers strongly urging the 

 planting of the so-called llussian mulberry upon the dry plains of the West. 

 It is said to draw well during the drouths of the latter part of summer, and is 

 recommended for thick planting in hedges and shelter belts, and for low 

 coppice wood to be cut over every four or five years for fuel. There are most 

 likely private interests at the base of these recommendations, for the mulberry 

 is very ill adapted for any of the purposes named. Hedge plants to be effective 

 must be untasteful to cattle, whose browsing Avould soon ruin them. The 

 barberry, the privet, the sweet-briar, and the osier (Salix purpurea) contain a 

 bitter principle which repels cattle; and as they are of dwarf dense hedgy 

 growth, any of them makes a good permanent fence, proof against all animal 

 trespass with the aid of a barbed wire to prevent cattle from pushing through. 



The fruit of the mulberry is very poor and the wood is soft and light, and of 

 little value for fuel even when taken from old trunks, and cattle destroy the 

 plants whenever they can reach them. The growth is free in the latter part of 

 summer because, like the peach and other semi-tropical trees, it does not gain 

 the full impulse of growth until the weather becomes hot. This is a frequent 

 cause of its failure to mature sufficiently to endure the winter. Peach-wood 

 makes excellent fuel. The mulberry in our climate is scarcely worth planting 

 excepting where it is intended to use the leaves for feeding silk worms, and it 

 is doubtful whether the trees of any variety of the alba will long endure annual 

 stripping in May and June where the seasons are too short for them to make 

 sufficient subsequent growth to mature their new wood. 



TIMBER STATISTICS. 



From the official reports of the Department of Agriculture at "Washington, 

 we take the following statement showing the number of feet of pine at present 

 in the States named, and the number of years it would last at the rate it is now 

 being removed : 



