1885. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



337 



so-called — will grow faster than the White ; but at 

 thirty-five years, or in one-third of that time, the 

 White pine will outstrip any European pine 1 have 

 ever had any experience with, and any American, 

 unless it be P. resinosa, which will hold its growth 

 with the White pine for nearly or quite twenty 

 years. And yet we never see the White pine 

 brought to the front as a rapid growing tree. 



I have White pines planted on the banks of my 

 ravine, poor gravelly soil. The trees were dug 

 out of the sand dunes on the Lake shore, little 

 miserable scrubs, about a foot high. They have 

 been planted thirty-one years, and I can show a 

 larger girth and greater height than Mr. Buist's 

 thirty-five-year-old tree ; but this is not a fair test. 

 Mr. A. R. Whitney, of Franklin Grove, Lee Co., 

 Illinois, eighty-five miles west of Chicago, dug 

 some White pine trees out of a sandy barren in 

 the neighborhood in 1859, that were about a foot 

 in height. He planted them in the sod where 

 they have not since been cultivated. I have seen 

 these trees nearly every year since they were 

 planted, but never noticed that they were doing 

 any belter than other White pines. 



Last winter Mr. Whitney was taken sick. I 

 went out in January to see him. The snow was 

 over two feet deep under these trees. I girthed 

 them at what I supposed to be three feet above 

 ground. These trees had then made twenty-six 

 years growth since planted, hence were nine years 

 younger than Mr. Buist's Corsican pine. One 

 girthed 5 feet 5 inches, one 5 feet 11 inches, and 

 one 4 feet 11 inches. And yet we never hear a 

 word about the rapid growth of the White pine, 

 while we know that if any such showing could be 

 made for a foreign tree, adapted to nearly all 

 kinds of soil, so free from disease, and the lumber 

 of such value when grown, our eyes would be 

 blurred reading its praises in every horticultural 

 paper, and our ears would be dinned listening to 

 essays and harangues in every forestry convention 

 in the country. 



I would have measured another group of White 

 pines, planted by Mr. Whitney's father in 1851, 

 but the snow was so deep, and the thermometer 

 26° below zero, my fingers declined to serve. 



IVaukeg-an, III. 



[In conversation recently with a highly intelli- 

 gent European forester the subject of the Cor- 

 sican pine was introduced. His views were 

 just about the same as Mr. Douglas'. " Rapid 

 growing enough when young, but does not make 

 timber of any size, and is not what we want." — 

 Ed. G. M.] 



A FINE SPECIMEN OF AMELANCHIER 

 CANADENSIS. 



BY DR. GORDON W. RUSSELL. 



Emerson says, " There are two remarkable 

 varieties of this species found in Massachusetts. 

 Both are called Shad-bush, from flowering when 

 the shad begin to ascend the streams." One of 

 these, A. ovalis, is usually found in low and 

 marshy grounds, and usually rises from four to 

 ten feet in height. The other, A. botryapium, or 

 June Berry, usually grows in upland woods; "is 

 a small, graceful tree, from fifteen to twenty-five 

 sometimes thirty, and even forty feet high ;" and 

 the above authority states that " a tree of this spe- 

 cies standing near the comb factory in Chester 

 (Mass.), measured five feet seven inches in cir- 

 cumference, at five feet from the ground." 



A still more remarkable specimen, which was 

 brought to my attention by Dr. Davis, of this city, 

 has been found in Glastonbury. It is in an open 

 field on the road to Buckingham, about forty rods 

 east of the main street, on the land of Isaac House. 

 It is composed of two trunks, hardly united, I 

 think, but growing closely together for the height 

 of six feet from the ground. These may spring 

 from two separate and distinct sets of roots, but 

 probably from one. On the south side, the sean>„ 

 or line of division, would plainly indicate that 

 there are two trees ; on the northeast side the line 

 is equally plain nearly to the ground, where the 

 separation is ill-defined and not clearly to be 

 traced; it is especially plain and well marked on, 

 the southwest side, though not as distinct as on the 

 opposite side. 



At three feet from the ground it is eight feet 

 eight inches in circumference, the line being 

 pressed into the depression, and this in the waist, 

 or narrowest part of the trunk, or trunks. The 

 long diameter is three feet seven inches. At the 

 point of separation, five feet from the ground, each 

 trunk, or branch, is five feet nine inches is circum- 

 ference, with a diameter of twenty-one inches. It 

 has a spread of branches of forty-nine feet each 

 way. It has a well-rounded head, and is gener- 

 ally healthy, though there are a few dead limbs in 

 its upper part. When these measurements were 

 made, May 21, 1883, there were still a few blos- 

 soms remaining in their last stage. I should judge 

 it to be from forty to fifty feet in height. 



I visited it again on May 15th of this year; it 

 was then in full bloom, and was a noble sight ; 

 any one passing it on the road would be struck 

 with the mass of greenish white flowers with which 

 it was covered. I could learn but little about it 



