HIGHWAY FORESTRY AND HORTICULTURE 



BY HENRy W. HULBERT 



SPEAKING of useful careers for returned enlisted 

 men, handicapped it may be in one way or another 

 for ordinary occupation, let me refer to one line 

 which has been in my mind for a dozen years, and which 

 seems to me altogether practicable. In every rural 

 township in America the roadways take up a very con- 

 siderable acreage, which, for the most part, is kept in a 

 very unsightly condition and is left to be the breeding 

 place of every bug and weed that can do damage to 

 field and forest. Just so long as a highway is fairly 

 passable during nine-tenths of the year the American 

 public seems content. The advent of the automobile and 

 truck is beginning to awaken general public interest in 

 the road question and doubtless we shall see from now 

 on a steady improvement in roadbeds, bridges and all 



adjacent land owners. While a considerable portion of 

 this land is so conditioned and suited that it cannot be 

 made valuable for purposes of cultivation, it all can be 

 a menace to the public in one way or another. Every 

 square inch of it is susceptible of being esthetically im- 

 proved if not of being made strikingly beautiful. 



I can see the smile mantling the faces of perhaps the 

 majority when they hear me say the roadsides of every 

 township in America are capable, by proper care, of 

 being made, in the end, rivals of any arboretum now in 

 the country. What they might lack in variety would be 

 made up in beauty and fruitfulness and practical interest ; 

 all placed directly before the eye of the passerby. Private 

 ownership and constant economic need and opportunity 

 are sure to lay low sooner or later every forest in the 



WALNUTS AS STREET TREES 



A highly desirable tree for street planting, under proper conditions of care and control. The walnut is a hardy and beautiful tree, reaching 



stately dimensions, and it bears a generous crop of valuable nuts. 



Other similar practical elements that concern transporta- 

 tion. The oversight of the engineering work involved 

 in these improvements should open out to the returned 

 men an increasingly large opportunity, especially as they 

 have become more or less familiar with the wonderful 

 road-systems of Europe. 



But the line of activity I have in mind concerns not 

 the roadbeds and the scientific drainage therewith con- 

 nected, but with the strips of land on either side of these 

 which ought to average on each hand at least twice the 

 width of the roadbed. Here are many thousands of acres 

 owned by the public and which are most often indiffer- 

 ently cared for, or not cared for, by the officials or the 



land thus privately controlled. On the highways and 

 in the public parks, especially set aside, alone, may future 

 generations have sure possession of mature specimens of 

 most of our native trees, not to speak of foreign trees 

 that may well be grown for their beauty or other interest. 

 Having taxed the patience of my readers thus far with 

 an academic presentation, let me hasten to explain how 

 all this can be financed and made practicable. Of course 

 this cannot be done in a day. It will inevitably be the 

 slow growth of years. But it is altogether feasible to 

 begin at once. That beginning is, to put a man on the job. 

 To do this will at once call for one of two conditions : 

 (i) Either there must be a public-spirited township that 



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