1886.] THE SURFACE CULTURE OF FOREST TREES. 675 



portion, but only a portion of the community, and this in many cases 

 a comparatively small portion of the connnunity ; and the connnunity 

 as a whole, by which the expense is met, has only the rever- 

 sionary benefit to compensate it for the expenditure incurred. 

 In view of these facts, — the acceptance by the community of the 

 principle involved, the smallness of the amount required when 

 compared with what is liberally granted by the nation fur like 

 objects, and the benefit likely to result to the community at 

 large, in addition to what may result immediately to teacliers and 

 taught, to landowners at home, and to colonial dependencies abroad, 

 — it may be admitted at once that the expenditure necessary for 

 the establishment of a Xational School of Forestry would be a 

 legitimate application of State funds, if private enterprise prove 

 insufficient to effect the purpose. 



THE SURFACE CULTURE OF FOREST TREES. 



THIS seems far less attended to than it used to be, though its 

 stimulating effects on growing plantations can hardly be over- 

 estimated. It is not merely that surface culture prevents the 

 growth of weeds, and thus cuts off the rivalry of competing roots, 

 but such culture mellows as well as enriches the soil, and thus 

 increases the available supplies of plant food on any given spot. 

 Soils stimulate growth less in proportion to the food they contain 

 than in the ratio in wdiich that food can be liberated. The locked 

 corn-chest or granary may be full of corn, but while it remains 

 locked, man and beast alike may sufier hunger and starve, though 

 placed in closest proximity to the food stores. It is just so with 

 the roots of plants. Thousands of forest trees are planted in soil 

 tolerably well stored with plant food. That food is too often locked 

 up or in with several of nature's patent locks or holdfasts, the most 

 powerful among which being water and weeds — the first either 

 steals the manurial worth of soils or holds them fast as in an iron 

 vice. By preventing the entrance of or driving out the air, water 

 completely arrests the decomposition of manure. To realize the 

 full significance of this, decomposition may be popularly described 

 as the cooking or preparing of the stimulating properties of soils 

 and the richer constituents of manure, so that they become fit for 

 use. Until thus transformed, the roots of trees or plants of any 

 kind cannot use them. I had a very forcible illustration of this 

 many years ago in the case of a wet portion of a field of potatoes : 

 the land w^as good, manure in plenty had also been added to it. 



