86 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



latter, indeed, would be very much more expensive, 

 because, few specimens being wanted, it would not be 

 worth while raising them from seed, while an arboretum 

 would require more weeding and pruning, as well as some 

 amount of permanent gardening, which in a forest is 

 unnecessary. 



Another important feature of such a forest would be, 

 that it would furnish reliable information as to what 

 valuable timber trees may be profitably grown in this 

 country. Among American trees the sugar-maple, 

 hickory, tulip-tree, redwood, and locust, are well-known 

 as producing valuable timbers for special purposes ; and 

 there are many trees of Eastern Europe and Asia equally 

 valuable, which it might be profitable to grow largely. As, 

 however, they have been hitherto almost always grown 

 singly for ornament, we have been unable to test, either 

 the rapidity of their growth under more natural conditions, 

 or the quality of their timber at different ages; all which 

 points would be determined, were they grown in quantity 

 as here proposed, by the mere periodical thinnings-out 

 necessary to encourage the free development of those that 

 were to remain and form the permanent forest. 



Passing now to the western or Californian coast of 

 North America, we find another forest region, remarkably 

 different from that of the Eastern States. It is charac- 

 terized at once by extreme richness in coniferous trees, 

 and what Professor Asa Gray terms its " desperate 

 poverty " in deciduous kinds, of which it has only one- 

 fourth as many as Eastern America, and one-half as many 

 as Europe.^ Almost all the trees which are especially 

 characteristic of Eastern America are wanting, their place 

 being chiefly supplied by peculiar species of oaks, maples, 

 ashes, birches, and poplars, groups which are equally 

 abundant on both sides of the Atlantic. When we turn 

 to the coniferous trees, however, Western America stands 

 pre-eminent, possessing nearly twice as many different 

 kinds as the Eastern States, and nearly three times as many 

 as all Europe, while it exhibits the grandest, tallest, and 

 most beautiful firs, pines, and cypresses in the world. 

 ^ Deciduous trees, 34 species ; conifers, 44 species ! 



