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AMKKICAN FORESTRY 



mam products of the algaroba and the chief uses to 

 which it is put in Hawaii. 



Wood for fuel, charcoal, timbers, and posts. 



Pods for fodder in their natural state and crushed 

 into meal. 



Blossoms for bee pasturage. 



Trees for reclamation of waste land, ornament, and 

 shade. 



Young trees for hedges. 



The wood of the algaroba is a dark reddish brown 

 in the heart, is as heavy as and harder than ash, elm, or 

 white oak, but not so strong or elastic. For fuel it is 

 equal, cord to cord, to hickory or white oak. Its dura- 

 bility is highly in its favor, and the heartwood used as 

 fence and foundation posts will last in the ground for a 

 great many years. The sapwood is a clear yellow and 



is apt to be riddled by borers if not used soon after 

 cutting. The smaller wood makes excellent charcoal, 

 while in Honolulu the best quality of fuel wood sells 

 for $14 per cord in enormous quantities annually. 



The honey industry in Hawaii is dependent almost 

 entirely on algaroba blossoms, and the clear honey pro- 

 duct is most delicious. The exports of honey and bees- 

 wax from the islands in 191 5 were worth $49,169. The 

 value of waste land has increased manifold on account 

 of the algaroba, and what would Honolulu be without 

 the algaroba as a shade tree? The young plants, set 

 thickly together, have been successfully grown as hedges 

 which are quite protective on account of their thorns. 



A boon to stockmen, the standby of the apiarist, and the 

 chief support of the wood dealer, the algaroba has well 

 earned its place as the most valuable tree in Hawaii today. 



THE CHESTNUT BLIGHT IN THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS 



BY G. F. GRAVATT 



IN 1904 the chestnut blight, a fungus importation 

 from Japan and China, was recognized as a serious 

 disease around New York City. Since then the 

 disease has spread steadily from New York as a general 

 center, rapidly killing the chestnut trees. 



The chestnut growth of northern Virginia and of the 

 three northeastern counties of West Virginia in 191 5 

 had numerous spot infections of the bark disease but 

 it was not generally infected. A brief inspection trip in 

 the fall of 1919 showed that the chestnut growth from 

 Nelson County in central Virginia northward to Wash- 

 ington, D. C, and westward to a line running through 

 Albemarle, Green, Rappahannock, Frederick and Hamp- 

 shire Counties, had an average of 5 to 15 per cent of the 

 trees killed by the disease and 90 per cent of them in- 

 fected. The infected trees will die in a few years. This 

 is a general average for the above section as some tracts 

 of chestnut timber have a large per cent of the trees 

 infected and dead, and other tracts a much smaller. 

 The most southern natural infections known are in Vir- 

 ginia in Patrick and Henry Counties, which border on 

 North Carolina. Undoubtedly the disease extends con- 

 siderably further south and west; as only a brief inspec- 

 tion was made, the limit of extent was not determined. 

 The zone which is heavily infected with the bark dis- 

 ease, has been spreading southward from New York at 

 an average rate of over twenty miles per year. The 

 disease has been spreading westward across the mountain 

 ridges somewhat more slowly. In the spread of this 

 disease in the past, infected nursery trees were quite a 

 factor, being much more important than they will be 

 in the future. However individual cankers enlarge at a 

 much faster rate in the south than in the north. There 

 has been hope that the progress of the disease would be 

 retarded by the higher per cent of tannin in the bark and 



wood of the chestnut of the south or by some other 

 factor. No indications of any decrease in the virulence 

 of the disease have been noted so far and the expectation 

 is that the chestnut growth of the Southern Appalachians 

 will be killed off just as the growth from New York 

 south to southern Virginia is being killed. 



In the Southern Appalachians it is expected that the 

 loss to private owners through deterioration of killed 

 chestnut timber before it can be marketed will amount 

 to a very large sum. Local markets become glutted and 

 local sawmill men become swamped with work as the 

 practically impossible task of cutting over the entire 

 forest area of a large region must be accomplished within 

 a comparatively few years in order to prevent serious 

 deterioration. Dead timber is more difficult to cut and 

 saw than live timber, in addition to the greater breakage 

 in felling and the difficulty in selling. Chestnut of pole 

 and timber size can, of course, be utilized for tannin 

 acid extract wood after deterioration makes it unfit for 

 other purposes. Owners of tannin extract chestnut who 

 do not cut their trees within a few years after they are 

 killed should figure on a decrease in volume of wood due 

 chiefly to fungus decay. It is a pity that so many of the 

 individual owners of woodland do not consider their 

 forest growth as a crop, as a business to which attention 

 must be given if profits are to be secured. Already in 

 northern Virginia thousands of acres of chestnut growth 

 need to be cut quickly if deterioration is to be forestalled, 

 especially in the case of trees suitable for poles. Many 

 owners make no effort to market their dying chestnut, 

 not realizing that it is decreasing in value. In many 

 cases where chestnut does not constitute a large per cent 

 of the stand, it suits the owners better to allow the chest- 

 nut to deteriorate while waiting for the time when the 

 entire stand can be cut over, or waiting for other reasons. 



