378 ANNUAL REPORT. 



fill an important place. It is as hardy as any tree that grows, and for lumber t* 

 most valuable pine found growing on the Rocky Mountains. The timber is heavy 

 and durable, and not liable to warp. 



Extensive forests of this valuable timber commonly called Yellow pine in Colo- 

 rado, are found growing from 8,000 to 10,000 feet altitude, on dry elevated table 

 lands, that are common to those higher mountain regions. 



Prof. H. W. Sargent in his supplement to "Downing's Landscape Gardening," 

 speaking of the P. Pondurosa says: "It is the hardiest of all pines, not excepting 

 our native White piae, and the fastest grower. We have a tree eighteen feet high, 

 raised from the seed in seven years; gigantic in every sense of the word. The new 

 shoots are two or three times as thick as those of the white pine and the same with 

 the buds. The annual growth of the leading shoots, exceed a yard in length." 



Our experience with this pine in the Denver Nurseries fully corroborates Prof. 

 Sargent's record. Not only is it a rapid grower but the wood is durable. We know 

 of posts planted in Colorado soil twenty years ago, apparently as sound as when 

 first set in the ground. 



In their native mountaia forests, where the seeds have dropped along those old 

 abandoned trails or road ways, or ia anyway are covered, even with the poorest 

 soil, leaves, or stone, they germinate and throw up a rapid growth. Where a fast 

 growing and valuable variety of timber is the object desired in timber culture, we 

 know of no tree so well suited to the Northwest as this heavy wooded pine of the 

 Rocky Mountains. 



Before concluding our remarks on this interesting and valuable class of trees, we 

 think our work would be incomplete, without adding the testimony of the late 

 lamented Dr. John A. Warder in one of his valuable pipers on forestry, writtctt 

 during his official term as President of the American Forestry Association. 



He says: "The spruces of the Rocky Mountains though still comparitively rare- 

 deserve a share of your attention, especially the Picea Pungens formerly called the 

 P. Menziesii, the silver spruce of those mountains; the Picea Englemani and thfr 

 Abies Donglasi." 



All these tiees are very beautiful; but you must be warned not to import them 

 from Europe. Look to the Rocky Mountains themselves and not to the Pacific- 

 Coast as the original supply of these trees. 



Mr. Cutler presented the following paper : 



NOTES ON FORESTRY. 



By M. Cutler, Sumter. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 



The subject of forestry is one which I feel myself incompatent to properly handle. 

 It is one demanding the greatest consideration by the people and law-makers of 

 our whole country. Our noble forests are rapidly pissing away before the merci- 

 less power of the axman's hand. And where, in the memory of the writer, a large 

 part of Western New York was covered with the monarchs of the forest, to day it 

 is nearly as barren as the prairies of the west. Drouths and floods are of common 

 occurrence, fences have nearly disappeared, and most of the fuel supply is obtained 

 from the coal mines of Pennsylvania. 



