210 



CHIPS. 



[July 



Ghips. 



The Tree in Printing House Square. 

 - — The ancient tree which Mr. John 

 Walter, M.P., preserved with much care 

 in the square of the Times office, fell on 

 the same day that Mr. Gladstone, the 

 eminent tree-feller, resigned. Is this 

 " an omen " ? The tree was a mystery 

 to most people. Its foliage was unlike 

 an}" other met with in London. Some 

 South Ameidcans visiting the office are 

 said to have recognised it at once as a 

 specimen of the striped maple. Some 

 one has suggested that it may have been 

 a specimen of the Becu — a South Ameri- 

 can and South African drug. One 

 authority on arboriculture christened it 

 a Sophora from Brazil. But it was 

 really a sjiecimen of the bush Ptelia 

 trifoliata, allied to the elm, a native of 

 North America. 



Teachings of the Past Winter. — I 

 never knew a harder winter than the 

 past one ; but it has taught us many a 

 lesson. We learn that, for general 

 cultivation in bleak and exposed places, 

 deciduous trees and shrubs are prefer- 

 able to evergreen ones ; the Austrian 

 and Scotch pines are unexcelled among 

 their kind for shelter-belts, and the 

 white spruce among its kind ; that 

 evergreens of every kind are, if un- 

 sheltered, injured by long - lasting, 

 north-west, zero winds ; and that in 

 case of in-any-way tender trees or 

 shrubs and especially evergi-eens, or 

 those to be set out in cold or bleak 

 situations, the spring time is by far the 

 most favourable season in which to 

 transplant them.^WiLLiAii Falconer 

 in Rural New Yorker. 



The Wild Black Cherry. — A cor- 

 respondent of the Philadelphia Press 

 says : " I never saw the wild black 

 cherry growing naturally on the prairie, 

 and yet it grows well when planted.'" 

 If he would look carefully into the 

 forests skirting the prairies, he would 

 see about the same number of cherry 

 in proportion to the whole number of 

 trees as he could find in any of our 

 forests. It is an exceptional tree like 

 the black walnut. You will read of 

 the oak woods, the beech woods and 

 the pine woods, but you never heard of 

 the black walnut woods nor the black 



cherry woods. The black cherry has 

 made wonderful progress in establish- 

 ing itself on the prairies, not that it is 

 better adapted to prairie soils than 

 many other trees ; indeed, it is at its 

 best in loamy soils and will make as 

 rapid growth on soils less rich, and 

 will never make a healthy tree in 

 low, moist soils. Circumstances have 

 favoured it beyond any other upland 

 tree in making its advances far into 

 the prairie. In the first place, it was 

 more generally distributed around the 

 ])rairie borders than any other upland 

 tree. When the plough had scarcely 

 entered the prairies of Northern 

 Illinois, it could be seen working its 

 way along the zig-zag rail fences of 

 Southern Michigan as it can now be 

 seen pushing out into the prairies of 

 Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, 

 Wisconsin and Southern Dakota, and 

 to this advance it is entirely indebted 

 to the birds and the fences. Pigeons, 

 mourning doves, robins, catbirds and 

 thruslies feed on the cherries, as do the 

 cedar birds, in flocks, and alight on the 

 fences to feed their young. The seeds 

 drop, and in a few years the seedling 

 trees which spring from them produce 

 cherries, and these seeds are cai'ried 

 still farther on. It may be noticed 

 that the board fences are not so good 

 as the old-fashioned rail fences to en- 

 coui-age the seedling growth. Few of 

 our trees have so wide a distribution 

 as the same black cherry. From 

 Florida to the lower British provinces 

 in the East and through the Western 

 States far out into Kansas it flour- 

 ishes. Mr. Fuller, in his Practical 

 Forestry., states that it is found as 

 far north as the woods about Hudson's 

 Bay. But this is probably a mistake. 

 The yellow cherry is a more northern 

 tree, and may easily have been con- 

 founded with the black species. After 

 careful searching and inquiry, I have 

 failed to find it in Northern Minne- 

 sota and Northern Dakota. Even in 

 Northern Wisconsin it is replaced by 

 the yellow cherry. I sent a few 

 hundred plants of the black cherry to 

 a gentleman in the extreme north of 

 Minnesota. He has planted largelj^ 

 and successfully many other species, 

 but pronounces the cherry not hardy 

 at that latitude. He is tr}^ing again 



