FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



FOREST FABLES. 



WOODLAND TALES WHICH SMACK OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN. 



IN the last issue of FORESTRY AND IRRIGA- 

 TION we called attention to some stories 

 which are going the rounds of the press 

 as Simon-pure news, but when dissected, even 

 by the most casual observer, will not pass 

 muster either as news or truth. In spite of this, 

 however, reputable journals give credence and 

 circulation to these yarns, seemingly without 

 any investigation whatever ; and, even at the 

 risk of spoiling one's faith in the veracity of 

 the press, we call attention to a couple more 

 which have had a long run before the market. 



THE BARN THAT ROSE. 



Many of our readers who have lived in the 

 rural districts, especially about a decade or so 

 ago, realize the full significance of a barn-rais- 

 ing, where all the neighbors come to help erect 

 the timbers of a new barn, and the occasion is 

 one of great social as well as industrial interest. 

 But the raising chronicled in a fugitive para- 

 graph, which has not yet been nailed, as far as 

 we know, is of quite a different sort. An im- 

 aginative writer exemplifies the saying that 

 " a little knowledge is a dangerous thing " by 

 taking the fact that willow logs will sprout and 

 grow in moist ground, even after they have 

 been cut from the tree for some space of time, 

 as the basis for a clever story which hails from 

 Iowa. In this case a man made the corner 

 posts of his barn of willow timbers, which he 

 cut and planted in the earth to insure the 

 stability of the structure. The well-known 

 habit of the Willow, aided and abetted by a 

 wet season, resulted in the astonishing phe- 

 nomenon of having the corner posts grow 

 rapidly, thereby raising the barn some inches 

 from the ground, and, in fact, so rapid was the 

 growth that at last accounts the farm animals 

 found shelter beneath the raised floor of the 

 marvelous barn. It sounds very good and is 

 certainly circumstantially based. But one who 

 knows anything about the growth of trees must 

 know that their increase in height comes 

 altogether from additional growth at the top 

 and not at the bottom ; that a scar on the trunk 

 of a tree four feet from the ground will re- 

 main at that height, no matter how long or 

 how tall the tree may grow. If this were not 

 so we would expect to see "blazes" on the 

 trunk of a tree, to indicate a trail or a boundary, 

 clear up among the topmost branches in the 

 course of time, out of reach and out of sight. 

 Unfortunately for the veracity of the barn story, 

 the persons who put such marks on tree trunks 

 do so with some idea of permanency, and have 

 not been disappointed, in countless years of the 

 practice, by finding that their memoranda grow 

 beyond future recognition. 



But the barn story has been going for some 

 time, and it will be quite a while before it is 



____ The farmer who owns the barn is 

 waiting for only one more year's growth to 

 double the capacity of his building, for by that 

 time he will have the simple task of boarding 

 up the lower part of the structure and putting 

 it to use ; and, as Kipling has so frequently and 

 aptly stated, "that will be another story." 



TO RID LAND OF STUMPS. 



An imaginative hack writer, who syndicates 

 his stuff, and therefore gives it wide circula- 

 tion, and who has headquarters in Washing- 

 ton, so that the esteemed Star of that city 

 prints his material, has evolved from a fertile 

 brain a solution of the great difficulty of clear- 

 ing land the task of removing the stumps. 

 It is preferable to give him credit for the in- 

 vention, though it seems quite as likely that 

 some shrewd old village wit put up a game on 

 " one o' them lit'ry fellers " and told the yarn 

 which the sedate old Star and other papers 

 subsequently vouched for. The burden of the 

 tale, which appeared in an article on raising 

 cranberries, told the way in which cranberry 

 meadows were cleared of timber, and is about 

 as follows : After the trees are cut and every- 

 thing removed save the stumps, the land, 

 which must be low, is diked, with an outlet at 

 one end, and flooded. When freezing weather 

 comes, the water freezes fast to the stumps. 

 More water is let in, raising the level of the 

 pond. The stumps are pulled up by the tre- 

 mendous upward pressure, and when a thaw 

 comes they are floated toward the outlet and 

 carted off. Sounds easy, doesn't it? The dif- 

 ficulty here is one of hydraulics rather than 

 forestry, but since it is a forestal operation it 

 comes properly in this column. Let us sup- 

 pose that the pond is frozen so tight that the 

 ice adheres to the stumps and the shore, so 

 that the added water can not get through any 

 interstices when it rises. This must be so, 

 else it would not raise the whole ice sheet ; 

 nor would it raise the stumps with it. Then 

 how does the added water get under the ice, 

 and why does it not freeze on top, the ice sheet 

 being water-tight ? Or if there is room for the 

 water to get underneath, it can not be fast to 

 the stumps ; or if the pond is frozen solid to 

 the bottom, where does the extra water go 

 when it is flowed in ? In plain words, it won't 

 work, and the story is a pretty variation of 

 the one in which the flock of ducks settled on 

 a pond and had their feet frozen fast. When 

 they were frightened they rose in the air, car- 

 rying the pond with them and leaving the 

 poor fish to gasp out their lives in the shallow 

 pools which were left ; and yet, as the files of 

 the usually reliable Washington Evening Star 

 will show, that story appeared therein last No- 

 vember as a matter of genuine news. 



