314 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Blight increase in nitrogen would occur, for it has been shown that all 

 plants are able to absorb the traces of carbonate of ammonia in the 

 air. But since leguminous plants may derive the large proportion of 

 their nitrogen from without the soil — that is, from the air — their use 

 for green manuring actually enriches the soil in nitrogenous matter; 

 and, as a matter of fact, this is true in a high degree. This advantage 

 of leguminous plants over other plants for green manuring increases 

 the poorer the soil is naturally, and the less its ability to absorb the 

 ammonia of the air. Leguminous plants which are adapted to grow on 

 such poor soils and produce a large crop of green material are excep- 

 tionally valuable. The lupines possess these qualities in a high degree. 

 Thus it is that the preference for this plant for green manuring, which 

 has existed for more than two thousand years, is today fully explained 

 and accounted for. 



FORESTRY. 



A TREELESS COUNTRY. 



"I had a dream which was not all a dream I " 

 A great State was a desert, and the land 

 Lay bare and lifeless under sun and storm, 

 Treeless and shelterless. Spring came and went, 

 And came, but brought no joy; but in its stead 

 The desolation of the ravine floods 

 That leaped like wolves or wildcats from the hills, 

 And spread destruction over fruitful farms, 

 Devouring as they went the works of man. 

 And sweeping southward nature's kindly soil 

 To choke the water-courses, worse than waste. 



The forest trees that in the olden time— 

 The people's glory and the poet's pride- 

 Tempered the air and guarded well the earth, 

 And under spreading boughs for ages kept 

 Great reservoirs to hold the snow and rain, 

 From which the moisture through the teeming year 

 Flowed equably but freely — all were gone — 

 Their priceless holes exchanged for petty cash. 

 The cash had melted, and had left no sign ; 

 The logger and the lumberman were dead ; 

 The axe had rusted out for lack of use ; 

 But all the endless evLl they had done 

 Was manifest upon the desert waste. 



Dead springs no longer sparkled in the sun ; 

 Lost and forgotten brooks no longer laughed ; 

 Deserted mills mourned all their moveless wheels; 

 The snow no longer covered as with wool 



