I02 



Canadian Forestry J ouryuil 



A short obituary notice will be found 

 elsewhere in this issue. — Ed.^ 



]My wife and I spent a delightful 

 afternoon with the Professor at 

 Grafrath, as a preliminary to a fu- 

 ture visit on the following Tuesday, 

 as it was our intention to proceed to 

 Ober-Ammereau for Sunday, to see 

 the famous Passion Play, which is 

 held on Sundays and saints' days, 

 during the summer of every tenth 

 year. 



Ober-Ammergau is beautifully sit- 

 uated in the Bavarian highlands, 

 adjoining the Austrian Tyrol, and 

 for its own sake is well worth a 

 visit. 



Here, as in other parts of Ger- 

 many, advantage has been taken of 

 natural conditions and environment, 

 as the hillsides afford a splendid op- 

 portunity of growing trees as a pro- 

 fitable crop. Land which cannot be 

 tilled economically will very often 

 grow trees of great commercial value 

 and supply material for numerous 

 industries. jMountain slopes afford 

 an excellent opportunity for profit- 

 able forestry, of which full advan- 

 tage has been taken, and nature is 

 everywhere being assisted in Ger- 

 many to maintain a supply of tim- 

 ber to meet the requirements of the 

 country. 



Prof. Mayr's Tree Garden. 



The Experimental Garden at Graf- 

 rath is 140 acres in extent. It is 

 situated on a terminal moraine, 

 varying, within short distances, from 

 heavy clay to sand and gravel soils 

 and is not, generally speaking, suit- 

 ed for agricultural purposes and 

 consequently has been very rightly 

 turned over to forestry. 



The object qI the garden is to 

 study the characteristics of indige- 

 nous trees and to study at the same 

 time what exotics may be most pro- 

 fitably cultivated in Bavaria. The 

 size of the garden is sufficient to en- 

 able large numbers of each species 

 to be grown under natural condi- 

 tions. The garden is traversed by 

 numerous footpaths which makes 



tlie inspection of the many varieties 

 of trees very easy. 



The following has been taken 

 verbatim from the printed report of 

 the Royal Scottish Arboricultural 

 Society's excursion to Bavaria 

 (1909) and has been included to 

 show the importance attached by the 

 Society to experimental gardens on 

 a large scale : — 



"In the cultivation of exotic spe- 

 cies, mistakes are frequently made 

 which lead to failure and disappoint- 

 ment. A certain amount of knowl- 

 edge in regard to the cultivation of 

 an exotic may be, and often is, ob- 

 tained from failures or negative re- 

 sults. This method of investigation, 

 however, savours too much of the old 

 method of trial and error. Such a 

 method of experimenting is slow and 

 costly, and the environmental condi- 

 tions are so varied that in such cases 

 it is difficult, nay, almost impossible, 

 to determine which factors are bene- 

 ficial and which injurious. The case 

 is quite different in a properly ar- 

 ranged experimental garden, where 

 experiments can be conducted on sci- 

 entific principles. Professor Mayr's 

 work has shown that a knowledge of 

 the trees in their native habitat is 

 one of the first essentials in dealing 

 with the introduction or cultivation 

 of exotics. A knoAvledge of the 

 physiology and geographical distri- 

 bution of the various species indi- 

 cates the lines unon which experi- 

 ments should be conducted, and this 

 can only be done in a properly or- 

 ganized experimental garden. 



The garden was laid out in 1884, 

 so that sufficient time has elapsed 

 to enable some valuable deductions 

 to be drawn. The Douglas fir flour- 

 ishes in Bavaria, as it does in Eng- 

 land, especially the Oregon or light- 

 green variety, which grows much 

 faster than that frpm Colorado. 



The experiments made with the 

 Japanese larch clearly demonstrate 

 the importance of careful scientific 

 investigation. This tree grows re- 



