192 



ARBORICULTURE 



trees are indigenous, the best and 

 straightest growth is in the moist muck 

 lands often growing in swamps where 

 water stands during several months of 

 the year. Locally these swamps are 

 called catalpa slashes. At the same 

 time the trees growing on rolling land, 

 especially if sandy, make substantial 

 progress if properly cultivated for two 

 or three years. 



The catalpa speciosa as well as walnut, 

 elm, ash, and in fact all trees, when 

 growing at a distance apart, are inclined 

 to form side branches with a low stem. 



Three methods are advocated for obvi- 

 ating this natural propensity. One is to 

 plant very closely, allowing nature, by 

 crowding, to force them into tall slender 

 stems. Another method, as practiced 

 with the catalpa, is to permit this branch- 

 ing, and after the trees have become 

 thoroughly established, with a strong 

 root system, to cut off the tree at the 

 ground, allowing the new shoot which 

 results, to make the permanent trunk, 

 which will be straight and with a surpris- 

 ingly rapid growth. A third method is 

 to prune away the side shoots, confining 

 the early growth to one stem. 



The first method requires long and 

 patient, or rather impatient, waiting, 

 with serious impairment of the capital 

 invested through interest and accumu- 

 lated taxes. The second is the more 

 economical method, while the third plan 

 requires good judgment in its manipu- 

 lation. 



The catalpa speciosa is provided with 

 numerous adventitious buds situated in 

 the bark. The eye cannot discover these 

 adventitious buds, so minute are they, 

 yet they exist, and when a tree is broken 

 off by accident or by storms, or is cut by 

 the axeman, they push forward to repro- 

 duce a new tree. Of course, the older 

 the tree, and thus having a stronger root 

 growth, the more rapid progress will the 

 new tree make. 



In a forest plantation I prefer to cut 

 the trees back after the third year. 



As many of the trees will make a 

 straight stem naturally, the use of the 

 knife in removing small side branches 

 and extra shoots inducing a concentra- 

 tion of all the energy of the tree into one 

 stem, is the most satisfactory treatment. 



and is by no means an expensive opera- 

 tion. An intelligent workman will tra- 

 verse a very large area of land, removing 

 objectionable branches while they are 

 half an inch thick, the expense being so 

 small as to be unnoticeable. 



The Pennsylvania officials at Pitts- 

 burgh and at Ft. Wayne are to be con- 

 gratulated upon the success thus far in 

 the Indiana experiment, and it is to be 

 hoped that it will result in a very large 

 area of land being set aside for the pro- 

 duction of timber, which is each year 

 being so much more difficult to obtain 

 and so much greater in cost. 



Government Free Seeds 



The United States Government, during the early 

 years of the republic, adopted a very wise policy of 

 collecting rare plants and seeds from every portion 

 of the world for the purpose of determining what 

 plants, not indigenous to this country, might be 

 introduced to increase our farm productions. 



All our ambassadors to foreign countries were 

 instructed to be on the alert and to secure every 

 new plant which might be valuable in some por- 

 tion of this country. Numbers of our most valued 

 trees and vegetable products were thus imported 

 from Japan, Russia and other distant lands. 



This policy has in recent years degenerated 

 into a political distribution of the commonest seeds 

 which are purchasable in any country store 

 throughout the land. A host of people in the city 

 of Washington were kept employed by the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, in putting up and mailing 

 tons of these cheap seeds, mostly upon orders of 

 congressmen, and many dishonest practices have 

 been connected with this abuse of a time-hon- 

 ored custom. 



The entire scheme, as practiced during the past 

 twenty years, is a disgrace to the nation. 



Many efforts have been made to break up the 

 free seed distribution, but politicians in Congress 

 cling with tenacity to what they believe to be a 

 powerful leverage toward an increase of popularity 

 among their constituency. 



It is an injustice to a large number of business 

 men who are engaged in seed trade. It is a 

 species of bribery which is degrading to farmers 

 and others who receive the se6ds. It is unjust to 

 the great majority of citizens who must pay for 

 these seeds in which they have no interest. 



It occupies the time and attention of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, which has great fields of 

 investigation to follow, all of which are hampered 

 by having so large a portion of the appropriations 

 expended in the seed distribution. 



The money squandered in the purchase of com- 

 mon and often very inferior seeds and in their 

 distribution would go very far toward the affores- 

 tation of the treeless regions of our country, if 

 wisely and properly managed. 



The practice should be discontinued. 



