A BEGINNER IN FORESTRY 



By ANNE WARNER 



Paper Three 



I MEANT to write an article on the 

 beginnings of German forestry, 

 but I must defer that until I can 

 get some books, as the only book 

 which goes far back, in my present 

 library, is one which tells how Bavaria, 

 under the Agilolfinger, was divided — 

 not by woods — but into cleared districts 

 or plain land. It's very interesting to 

 read, but doesn't bear much relation to 

 our subject — unless, indeed, one goes 

 out of his way to wonder if, perhaps, 

 America won't be divided into plains 

 and cleared spaces herself before long. 

 I suspect that the forest is such a men- 

 ace to new society, and such a problem 

 to settlers, that its destruction is sim- 

 ply a rule of economics, which each 

 nation has to solve summarily in the be- 

 ginning. They all solve it pretty much 

 the same way, too. And then comes 

 the same result. 



In lieu of a nice story about the 

 When and Where, I am forced to offer 

 this time a riddle which racked our 

 brains and which may be simpler to 

 others, but is still complex to me. 



Yesterday we were all in the woods, 

 and there we came suddenly upon one 

 of the most wonderful sights which I 

 have ever seen. It burst upon us quite 

 unexpectedly, and stopped us short. 

 There we stood — "we" being the 

 women, two men, a small girl, a don- 

 key and a poodle — and this is what we 

 saw: 



An enclosure about loo by 200 

 feet. Around it posts five feet high, 

 with a wire running on top. Below the 

 wire a wide-meshed net, pegged to the 

 ground occasionally (not so often as 

 "semi-occasionally," but rather quadri- 

 occasionally, I should say). In a few 

 places the net was carefully tied to the 



wire above. There was something so 

 naive and childlike about the whole 

 treatment of the net — something which 

 led us to hold the poodle from diving 

 under it — something which savored of 

 the wickedness of picking the pockets 

 of a sleeping friend. No one would 

 have willingly desecrated the purpose 

 of the net, and all that troulDled us 

 was that it was so hard to guess its 

 purpose from its behavior, that we hesi- 

 tated for fear of doing so. 



And, after all, the net was only the 

 frame of the rest of the riddle. Within 

 the guarding net were long rows of 

 stout twigs, each with a bit of twine 

 tied to its top. The bits of twine were 

 about eight inches long, and each had 

 an old rag tied to the other end. The 

 little rags all waved in the breeze. Two 

 of the twigs were crowned with odd 

 bunches of dead leaves tied up in old 

 cloth ; two others were crowned with 

 tin cans ; in the center of the whole an 

 old umbrella was carefully pegged 

 down. 



Nothing so weird and mysterious 

 was ever seen before. Some one who 

 had never been in India, said it made 

 him think of an Indian graveyard, and 

 some one who had never known a ghoul 

 said it looked ghoulish to her. We all 

 stood and wondered for a long, long 

 time, and the only opinion hazarded was 

 that it was to catch rabbits. In view 

 of the laxness of the net, this might 

 sound absurd, only that we have learned 

 by experience that the Lichtenberg 

 ideal of a trap is very novel indeed. 

 The mouse traps here are two-storied, 

 with a window upstairs. After the 

 mouse is caught, he leans in the win- 

 dow — literally on his elbows, for I've 

 seen one caught — and as soon as the 



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