730 EDITORIAL NOTES. [April 



" Dayton Hedge Company " of Ohio is the patentee, and the 

 " Michigan Hedge Company," which we gather from the Albany 

 County Gentleman is a branch of the first-named company, is the 

 cause of so much trouble in the district in which it claims to operate, 

 that the press is taking the matter up with, we should think, good 

 reason in the public interests. We have it on high authority that 

 there is nothing new under the sun, and we certainly thought that 

 anything new in such an ancient and well-worn subject as hedge- 

 planting was hardly possible. We also thought, on noticing the 

 correspondence in our American contemporary, that there must 

 necessarily be something specially good and novel in a method of 

 planting that had been deemed by our shrewd relatives over the 

 Atlantic worthy of protection by patents. On examination, how- 

 ever, we find there is nothing in it ; the system being that of 

 bending or laying the stem of the plant underground, v^'hich was 

 practised more or less both in this country and in America by the 

 great-gi'andfather of the oldest inhabitant of either country. To 

 our old-world insular intellects the claim of this American " Hedge 

 Company " appears incredibly absurd ; but as we gather from our 

 contemporary that the agent of the company, in falminating his 

 threats of prosecution of those who infringe the patent rights in 

 question, has 150,000 dols. to do it with, we are constrained to 

 believe that to a certain section at least of the Yankee mind it has 

 bottom in it. 



We note that French forestry authorities are not fully satisfied 

 with nor even agreed on the merits of their own Forestry School 

 at Nancy. It appears from some correspondence that has recently 

 been published by the Bcvue cles Eaux ct Forcts, that there exists an 

 opinion among those who may be supposed on the other side tlie 

 English Channel to know, that there is room for improvement in 

 both the theoretical and practical instruction given to students at 

 that establishment. It is even proposed by one writer to abolish 

 the Forest School altogether, and attach the students to the Agricul- 

 tural Institute at Paris, The leader in this proposed innovation is 

 M. Marcel Taillis, who claims for his proposal that better instructed 

 officers would be turned out, and that it would be more economical 

 both for the State and for the students. We do not pretend to be 

 able to express an opinion on the merits of the question as put by 

 M. Marcel Taillis, but it occurs to us that his implication of ineffi- 

 ciency, and the proposed sweeping change which he recommends as 

 an improvement, should have been more powerfully supported by 

 facts and evidence than they are. He presents little, if any, proof 



