210 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



LJuly, 



which lie under their feet, and the innumerable 

 tons of matter that may be available for fertilizing 

 purposes, and that much of the idle and neglected 

 materials represent a vast amount of wealth." — 

 American Agriculturist, April, 1880. 



[We quite agree with the Agriculturist that all 

 that is needed is to work up the muck so as to | 

 make the nitrogen available. But it is this work- 1 

 ing up that is the bother. In the writer's ex- 



perience it would cost about $30,000 to work up the 

 $25,000 available, and the effort to utilize it has 

 been abandoned. If any one can give in detail 

 profitable methods of utilizing swamp muck, it* 

 would be doing excellent service. — Ed. G. M.] 



Smith's Improved Gooseberry. — P. says : "Will 

 some of the readers of the Monthly give their 

 experience with Smith's Improved Gooseberry. 

 Is it free fi'om mildew ? 



Forestry. 



COMMUNICA TIONS. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY. 



An excellent account of some of the good 

 work being done in American Forestry appeared 

 recently in the Boston Herald, and which we give 

 our readers below. We might take exception to 

 some of the ideas advanced, but on the whole, 

 the paper will meet with general approval. We 

 may, however, note there is no actual necessity 

 for the feeling that when a forest is planted it is 

 only for one's children, for there is no need of 

 waiting till one is past middle age before making 

 profit from a forest. We take the ground that a 

 judiciously managed forest may come into profit 

 in ten years ; and by profit we mean that it 

 shall yield a handsome sum over all expenses, 

 interest on capital invested included. 



" There are probably few who better appreciate 

 the advantages of neighboring forests than the 

 prairie farmer of the West, whose lone dwelling 

 stands exposed, almost as much as a ship at sea, 

 to the full, fierce sweep of the winds that blow 

 across the wide, level expanse, with nothing in 

 their track to break their force. In mid-winter, 

 while his house is half buried in the snow drifts 

 and seems but a mound in the blank waste, he 

 sits by his corn-burning fire and thinks how fine 

 and comfortable it would be if, twenty or thirty 

 years before, when he first settled there, he had 

 only planted a few of his hundreds of broad acres 

 with trees, and his home now lay warm and 

 calm on the leeward side of a fine piece of wood- 

 land as undisturbed by the frigid northwester as if 

 it were not blowing. His gardens, too, would not 

 be parched and baked to death by the first dry 

 wind of summer, and his fruit not shaken from 

 the boughs nor blasted. And, reflecting on the 

 high price of lumber, and the scarcity of fuel 

 that compelled him to burn his grain, he would 



I see what a profitable investment it w'ould have 

 been. A few had the forethought to take such a 

 course, and its wisdom is now so manifest that 

 throughout the prairie States there is a universal 

 interest in the subject of tree-planting, although 

 its importance, as a means of affording shelter 

 and supplying the rapidly increasing population 

 with fuel, timber, etc., has been felt by many 

 since their first settlement. By those able to 

 look ahead to the future development of these 

 States since the enormous growth of the railroad 

 system there, consuming as it does every year an 

 immense number of ties, etc., the necessity has 

 been more keenly felt. The new railroads built 

 in the treeless States in 1879 required over ten 

 million ties in their construction. It will be 

 seen that an immense consumption of forests is 

 caused by railroads alone. Before the great 

 panic of 1873, several attempts at tree-planting 

 had been made by railroad companies, but none 

 were successful, owing to bad management, an 

 impi'oper selection of trees, neglect and fire, the 

 result of the trees being planted too near the line 

 of the railroads. But, lately, an earnest has been 

 given of the great value of the Harvard Arbore- 

 tum at West Roxbury to the material interests of 

 the country. Within the last two years, under 

 the inspiration of that institution, more system- 

 atic attempts at railroad tree-planting have been 

 made in Kansas by the Fort Scott & Gulf Rail- 

 road Company, several hundred acres having 

 already been planted ; and, during the present 

 winter, a Boston capitalist has contracted for the 

 planting of 560 acres of prairie land in eastern 

 Kansas. This contract is made with Messrs. 

 Robert Douglas & Sons, of Waukegan, 111., the 

 largest and most successful raisers of forest-tree 

 seedlings in the United States, and is peculiar 

 and novel in its provisions. They agree, at a 

 certain price per acre, — which would differ, of 

 course, with diti'erent conditions and location, — 

 to break and plow the land, prepare it for plant- 

 ing, plant not less than 2720 trees to the acre, 

 and cultivate these until they shade the ground 

 and so require no further cultivation, to keep 

 down the weeds and strong natural grasses — the 



