280 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



deepest forest, where the track is 

 always good? Between Lansing and 

 Owosso, a distance of about 25 miles, 

 the only uniformly good stretch of road 

 is a distance of two miles through a 

 dense forest. On the light soils of a 

 large part of our State, nothing assists 

 more to keep the track in good condi- 

 tion than moisture, and on all such 

 thei'e is no danger from too heavy road- 

 side planting. 



But how about our heavier soils 1 

 On them certainly, the clearing away 

 of the forests improves the track by 

 making it drier. But, proving that a 

 forest is bad, no more proves a single 

 line of trees to be so, than the drown- 

 ing of a man in the ocean proves that 

 a foot bath is dangerous. 



Let us reflect a little on the process 

 of drying or evaporation ; this is an 

 absorption by the air of the moisture 

 contained in those substances with 

 which it comes in contact, and its 

 rapidity varies according to the degree 

 of saturation of this air. Without 

 ■wind this soon reaches a point that 

 produces equilibrium and so checks 

 evaporation entirely, except as upper 

 strata may gradually absorb part of the 

 moisture of the lower. 



A wind however soon changes all 

 this, and by commingling the different 

 strata of air, constantly brings new 

 portions of unsaturated air into con- 

 tact with the moist surface, and so dries 

 it much more rapidly than still air can. 

 It is an error to say that the sun 

 "drinks up water;" except through 

 heating the air and thereby increasing 

 its capacity for holding the vapor of 

 water, it does not help at all in the 

 process of evaporation. It is the air 

 that is thus made thirsty by the action 

 of the sun, and it is the air which 

 drinks up the water from the surface 

 of the earth or of the ocean. Thus we 

 see tnat it is of comparatively little 



moment whether or not we shade our 

 road bed, if we do not at the same time 

 shut off the winds from blowing upon 

 it. There is no danger of our doing 

 this to an injurious degree if we take 

 care to trim so as to have no branches 

 within eight or ten feet of the ground. 

 Such trees, standing 60 feet apart, will 

 serve to modify the violence of heavy 

 winds, but they will produce none of 

 the effects of a dense thicket, which, 

 by shutting off all wind, almost pre- 

 vents evaporation, and so keeps the 

 ground beneath it moist at all times. 

 Many muddy roads are inexcusably so, 

 because nothing has been done toward 

 shaping them so as to shed water from 

 their surface. A road on heavy soil, to 

 be good at all times, should be rounded 

 off from the sides toward the centre 

 witli a good open ditch at the sides. 

 Where this has been thorougly done 

 there will be very little cause to com- 

 plain of the effect of roadside tree 

 planting. No farmer need be reminded 

 of the influence of isolated trees in his 

 fields, which is rather to dry up than to 

 keep moist the soil about them, and by 

 thus drying out to stunt the growth of 

 smaller vegetation near them. 



The practice of perfect road-making 

 is wholly unknown in this country as 

 compared with England, Germany, 

 France and Switzerland, and yet in 

 those countries nothing is more com- 

 mon than to see long lines of trees on 

 each side of roads, the surface of which 

 is as smooth and free fix)m luts or stand- 

 ing water as a parlor floor. 



Profit in Grape Growing. — The 

 average yield of Concords is 15 to 20 

 pounds to the vine, or say about 12,000 

 pounds to the acre, which, at four cents 

 per pound, about the average price, 

 brings $4:S0 per acre, deducting for pick- 

 ing, packages, &c, , even at this low price 

 there is a net yearly profit of at least 

 $250 to ^300 per acre. Who says grapes 

 don't pay l — Fruit Recorder. 



