I88s.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



241 



way for agricultural pursuits. This fire he says 

 continued burning for seven whole years, and this 

 statement receives full credit in the Old World. 

 We in America, who know how soon the most 

 terrific forest fire is humbled by a rain storm, can 

 only ask, was there no rain in all Madeira in these 

 seven long years ? But the woods themselves 

 answer the question. There could not have been 

 such woods in a rainless climate. Yet it is meas- 

 urably on such " facts " as these that theories of 

 rainfall and forests have been deduced. 



The Corsican Pine. — The Pinus Laricio is sup- 

 planting the Scotch pine and the larch in the esti- 

 mation of English foresters. We believe the tree 

 is less adapted to American climate than its neigh- 

 bor the Austrian. 



Durability of the Larch It seems too bad 



that after waiting some fifty years for forestry 

 profits, the English and Scotch should find their 

 hundreds of acres of larch an " arid waste " so far 

 as bankable returns are in question. The timber 

 instead of being durable as the forest enthusiasts 

 who write books and give forestry addresses at 

 conventions and fairs insisted, is at length proved 

 to be " sadly wanting in durability," and they 

 have to depend on Norway yet for " deal," as 

 they term the timber of the Norway spruce, for all 

 their leading work. 



Rapid Growth of Timber Trees. — We have 

 seen in our country that it is possible to get trees 

 large enough for profitable timber in twenty years, 

 but not by planting them in masses as in a natural 

 forest, but by giving them room to develop ; 

 not by taking a piece of ground unfit for vegeta- 

 tion, and making a forest where there was not 

 food for even a mullein to get rich on — but by 

 giving them ground rich in material, and wherein 

 a plant would love to grow. There are plenty of 

 facts that would teach this in the old world, but 

 they do not see them, or if they do, the lessons are 

 lost. 



Here is a very interesting fact regarding one of 

 our own trees, native to the Rocky Mountains and 

 the Pacific coast, which we find in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle : 



" As the result of an accident we were, the other 

 day, compelled to cut down what 1 believe was 

 the finest specimen of Abies grandis in this coun- 

 try. It was 72 ft. in height, 2 ft. 2 in. in diameter 

 at the butt end, and it contained upwards of 70 

 cubic ft. of timber, all the result of about thirty- 

 three years' growth. The wood, about which 

 later on I shall have more to say, appears of ex- 

 cellent quality, and has a most agreeable perfume. 



That it is a rapid grower will be known when I state 

 that several of the annual rings near the butt end 

 measured an inch in thickness." 



Here we have a tree which in a climate not 

 favorable, from its short summer, to a rapid 

 growth, making a tree 72 ft. high and 6 ft. round 

 in 33 years. If it had been set thick with others 

 in a forest, where the " profit " would be supposed to 

 come from annual "thinnings," such a tree would 

 have taken a century to produce. We see that 

 even in that cool country one may, if he choose, 

 get a profitable forest in 20 years, but still we 

 shall read that it takes ages to grow a tree. 



The Way to Make Timber Culture Profit- 

 able. — The Philadelphia Weekly Press, which, by 

 the way, has one of the most ably edited agricul- 

 tural departments in its weekly edition of any 

 daily paper that comes to our table — takes ex- 

 ception to some remarks of ours on timber culture 

 that appeared in our June number. It says: 



" We, doubt, however, whether forest planting 

 on a large scale would ever pay if it was done 

 according to the directions laid down by Prof. 

 Meehan. He would have no undergrowth and 

 keep the forest as he would an orchard. 



" 'For our country,' he adds, 'a forester should 

 set out about 200 trees to the acre ; crop for two or 

 three years in some good desirable farm product, 

 until the trees had grown so as to claim all the 

 ground for themselves ; then let them have it, or 

 graze if desirable, when" the trunks are strong 

 enough to take care of the tree.' 



" That is, he would set the young trees fifteen feet 

 apart. They would need to be pretty large sap- 

 lings if they claimed all the ground for themselves 

 in two or three years. Experience shows that 

 small trees are the safest to transplant, but if not 

 it would be impossible to use trees large enough to 

 cover the ground in any such period when set so 

 far apart. If seedlings one or two years old are 

 set four feet apart they are a help to each other 

 against the winds, and they soon shade the ground 

 to keep down the grass, which is certainly as ex- 

 hausting as undergrowth. As they crowd each 

 other they can be thinned out, and these successive 

 thinnings are worth much more than the cost of 

 cutting them. Why should we treat a forest like 

 an orchard ?" 



To which we have to reply that if we can make 

 any use of the ground for more than two or three 

 years, we certainly should, — six, seven, eight, ten 

 or more, if it was clear that the returns would pay 

 for the labor spent. 



When we said we would treat a forest as we 

 would an orchard, it was intended to mean, that 

 as an orchard needed continual care for success 

 we must give continual care to a forest if we would 

 get all out of it that profit requires. We would 

 set out 200 trees to the acre as in an orchard ; but 



