1883.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



SCRAPS AND QUERIES. 



The Earliest Peaches South.— Mr. William 

 Watson writes : " We had our first ripe peaches 

 to-day, Alexander in the lead. Saunders, Wilder, 

 Downing, Ey. Canada and other sorts, claimed to 

 be earlier than Alexander, will not be in for over a 

 week yet. Could you give in the Monthly the 

 time of ripening in the different Southern States? 

 It would be of interest to parties planting for 

 market to know what the prospects for competition 

 will be. We can now ship to St. Louis, Chicago 

 and other large markets. Crop prospects in Texas 

 fine, and the crop of Northern tree agents is simply 

 immense." 



The Primo Strawberry. — D. Smith, of New- 

 burgh, New York, says: "The Primo Strawberry 

 more than holds its own, with us. It increases in 

 favor. Competent judges, to whom it with some 

 forty other varieties were submitted, gave it their 



decided preference. It has during the past year 

 been more largely disseminated in this vicinity, 

 and we wait patiently for further developments in 

 relation to it. 



Ridding Gardens of Moles. — A lady whose 



garden is very much disturbed by moles, and who 



has not found traps a success for the destruction 



of the animals, wishes to know what can be done 



to abate the nuisance. Where traps fail, the next 



best thing to do is to let a lad watch the garden 



for a day, and as soon as the moles are seen to 



{ throw up the earth, dig them out with a spade. 



1 This plan is often followed. The person watching 



I may have some employment near, and every half 



j hour would be often enough to approach where 



the burrows are. The place must be approached 



very quietly, as the least sound frightens away the 



j mole. Run the spade into the ground behind 



where the earth is rising to cut off all retreat, and 



the work is done. 



Forestry. 



COMMUNICATIONS. 



FOREST FIRES. 



BY PROF. C. S. SARGENT. 



The necessity of devising methods for prevent- 

 ing the spread of forest fires cannot, with the grow- 

 ing demands of a larger population upon our 

 forests, be longer safely neglected. The forest 

 question has become a question of dollars and 

 cents ; we cannot longer afford to allow our forests 

 to burn. 



The proportion of actually productive forest to 

 population is in New England already too low, and 

 we have long imported most of our forest supplies 

 from Canada, from the Western pineries, and from 

 the South. The center of lumber distribution has 

 moved westward from New England to beyond 

 the Hudson, and then to the shores of Lake 

 Michigan. 



The extent of the loss which the country ex- 

 periences every year from the destruction of wood- 

 lands by fire is enormous, and could the actual 

 amount of such losses be computed they would 

 astonish even those most familiar with the condi- 

 tion of the American forests. The division of the 



tenth census which has been specially engaged 

 during the past three years in studying the forests 

 of the country, has endeavored to gather statistics 

 of the extent and value of the forests burned dur- 

 ing the year 1880. The results obtained from this 

 investigation have not been pubUshed yet. The 

 information is often vague and untrustworthy, and 

 even after the most careful analysis is so liable to 

 mislead that it will be safer, for the present at least, 

 to use the results as a basis for general discussion, 

 without drawing actual deductions so far as the 

 whole country is concerned from statistical state- 

 ments in which danger of error is of necessity con- 

 siderable. Enough, however, will be shown to 

 indicate, with all due allowance for defective re- 

 turns, that the extent of forest fires throughout the 

 country is infinitely greater than has ever been 

 seriously supposed. 



In Massachusetts, to be sure, the amount of 

 property destroyed in this manner is shown to be 

 comparatively small, and it is fair to assume in a 

 community like this that estimates are more care- 

 fully made and more accurately returned than in 

 the thinly settled forest regions of the far Western 

 States and Territories. And yet in Massachusetts, 

 in the year 1880, according to these returns, 13,899 



