1900. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



'75 



Guard Against " Reports from all sec- 

 Fires. t i ons O f the White Pine 



country of Minnesota and northern Wis- 

 consin show the woods ripe for disastrous 

 forest fires. Never in the memory of 

 woodsmen have the woods been so com- 

 bustible in the month of June as they now 

 are. Swamps that have never been known 

 to be penetrable except in mid-winter, are 

 reported to be dry and hard, and so thor- 

 oughly baked that brush and grass are 

 dying. The underbrush throughout the 

 woods is drying up from lack of moisture, 

 making the woods a veritable tinder box. 



" The fire warden is using uncommon 

 diligence to post notices concerning pre- 

 cautions against the spreading of fires. 

 Every day reports come in of fires of 

 greater or less proportion. Along rail- 

 road lines fires smoulder or travel slowly, 

 being seemingly of little note till a high 

 wind springs up and carries the fire too 

 rapidly for check by watchmen. Many 

 people are leaving the woods entirely fear- 

 ing a repetition of the Hickley fire." 



Since this appeared in the Mississippi 

 I '(7 Ue\' Lumberman early in July rain has 

 fallen in parts of White Pine region, and 

 some fires that had started have been put 

 out by it. The danger at the time of go- 

 ing to press (July loth) is still, however, 

 unusually great. 



^ 



The Last of the "The Chicago Inter- Ocean 

 Black Walnut, describes a procession of 21 

 wagons that passed through the business 

 portion of Wabash, Indiana, the other 

 day. They were loaded with the last lot 

 of merchantable Walnut lumber that 

 Wabash county will furnish for many a 

 year, and were placarded with the signifi- 

 cant words at the head of this article. 

 The Inter- Ocean says that the procession 

 passed slowly, like a funeral procession, 

 which it was, and the ceremony would 

 have been equally appropriate in any of 

 the former Black Walnut regions of Penn- 

 sylvania, New York, Ohio and other 

 States, for this magnificent tree has almost 

 disappeared in all of them. The older 

 readers .of The Farmer can remember 

 when Black Walnut was comparatively 

 plenty in rich, humid soils of the central 



States, and was not regarded as particu- 

 larly valuable. In the settlement of these 

 regions the trees were slaughtered along 

 with all others, rails and posts made out 

 of them, and many were burned up in the 

 log heaps of clearings. This was before 

 the lumber became popular for furniture, 

 house finishing and decorative purposes. 

 On the writer's farm there are still some 

 old rails of Black Walnut, still compara- 

 tively sound, and they must have been 

 made not less than seventy years ago. 

 Some of these rails can be found yet on 

 many farms in Walnut localities. When 

 the beauty of the wood became appre- 

 ciated, its splendid grain, its polishing and 

 working and lasting qualities, Black Wal- 

 nut lumber advanced in pricfe rapidly. 

 Dealers scoured the country in pursuit of 

 it, and in a few years, on account of its 

 growing scarcity, it commanded fabulous 

 prices. The writer can remember when 

 the large limbs and all the rough top part 

 of the trunks of trees cut for lumber were 

 made into firewood, but soon these became 

 too valuable for such b;ise use. Mills 

 were constructed for sawing up all these 

 portions of the tree, even knots became 

 valuable for veneers, and fences were 

 robbed of Walnut rails that could be con- 

 verted into more valuable shape."- -The 

 Ohio Farmer. 



J* 



"Trees and plants have their regular 

 times for going to sleep. They need the 

 chance to rest from the work of growing and 

 to repair and oil the machinery of life. 

 Some plants do all their sleeping in the 

 winter, when the ground is frozen and the 

 limbs are bare of leaves. In hot countries, 

 where snow never falls and it is always 

 growing weather, the trees rest during the 

 rainy season or during periods of drought. 

 They always choose the time when they 

 cannot work the best for doing their sleep- 

 ing, just as mankind chooses the night, 

 when he cannot see to work. A Norwegian 

 scientist has made some interesting experi- 

 ments trying to chloroform plants, and he 

 has found that the fumes of this sleep-giver 

 make the plant sleep harder and grow 

 faster when it wakes up."- Pacific Coast 

 \Vood and Iron. 



