24 



THE FORESTER. 



January, 



three States of New England, 

 taken together, very much more than one- 

 half, probably two-thirds. It is also safe 

 to say that eighty or ninety per cent, of all 

 these woodlands receive practically no 

 care at all, except that of sometimes trying 

 to put out fires when they threaten other 

 private property. What other of the nat- 

 ural resources of New England is so neg- 

 lected ? 



" During most of our history and be- 

 fore railroads brought us in competition 

 with the fertile and more easily tilled 

 lands of the West, much land was cleared 

 which is no longer profitable for agricul- 

 ture. Most of this will reforest itself, 

 when given a chance, and some of it is 

 already growing into woodland. This is 

 inevitable and it is advisable that land 

 valuable as woodland than for agriculture 

 should be allowed to again grow up with 

 trees, but the new forest needs more care 

 than it has heretofore received that it maybe 

 of greater value to the owner. The thrifty 

 farmer tills his fields in such ways that he 



This part of the subject is a very im- 

 portant one for New England, with its 

 many manufactures using water for power, 

 and its growing cities looking for larger 

 water supplies." Prof. Wm. H. Brewer 

 before the Washington Co. (Conn.) Agri- 

 cultural Society. 







Root of the "If one should make a 



Hemlock. study of the hemlock tree 



he would find that it does 

 not grow well in ordinary clay, gravelly 

 soil, or even loam, but that it thrives best 

 when it is established in a piece of ground 

 which is covered to some depth with decay- 

 ing leaves and twigs. This decaying 

 matter or humus is a wonderful substance, 

 and makes up a world of life of its own. 

 It teems with bacteria, is pierced in a thou- 

 sand directions by the glistening white 

 threads of the moulds, and is inhabited in 

 the upper layers by the threads and colonies 

 of green algag, and by the green protonemal 

 threads of mosses and liverworts, all of 



may not only have good crops this year, but which are busily engaged in breaking up 



that his farm be kept in good condition for 

 future crops. Let him no longer cut over 

 his woodland with little or no regard for its 

 future crops. Hereafter, that will not be 

 considered a thrifty way of doing busi- 

 ness. Let us keep continually in mind 

 the fact that well kept woodlands are of 

 both direct and indirect uses to both the 

 actual owner and to the community at 

 large. Of the indirect uses, its relations 

 to the water supply is perhaps the most 

 obvious. We all know that our wells and 

 streams have become more uncertain as 

 the forests have been destroyed. This is 

 so well known that many have come to 

 believe that forests directly cause rain. It 

 is possible that they do, to a slight extent, 

 but their influence in this way is too little 

 to amount to much. They are not the 

 cause of rain, but they conserve the rain 

 which falls. We have cut down many 

 forests that once existed, but that is not 

 the reason so little rain has fallen for the 

 last three months, and yet that destruction 

 is chiefly responsible for the low water in 

 our reservoirs and streams and wells and 



springs in 



this 



drought 



the dead leaves and using their substances 

 for food. Into this mass the hemlock 

 sends its finer roots for the same purpose. 



" The roots of the tree are not able to 

 take up the substance of the decaying hu- 

 mus by reason of some unknown charac- 

 ter in their structure, and unless they un- 

 dergo some adaptation maynotderive much 

 food from the surface layer of soil in the 

 forest. Since the tree cannot secure this 

 valuable food by its own efforts it has en- 

 aered into a partnership with the moulds 

 snd mushrooms which will enable it to do 

 to. By this association the threads of the 

 moulds and mushrooms unite with the 

 roots to form what is known as mycor- 

 hiza. 



" If the tips of the roots of the hemlock 

 are examined it will be seen that many of 

 them are short, blunt, and club-shaped and 

 that the branches are curiously clustered, 

 but beyond this nothing can be found to 

 indicate a partnership between these or- 

 gans and moulds. If a thin slice be cut 

 from the tip, however, and magnified fifty 

 times under the microscope, it will be 



now prevailing. found that the root is completely enclosed 



