1 82 



CONSERVATION 



vanced its prices, beyond a modest profit. 

 and it is relatively so low that it now makes 

 little difference in price whether an office 

 building or a home is finished in mahogany 

 or quartersawn white oak. Another reason 

 for its popularity is because it improves 

 in tone with age. 



K % 



Woodpeckers Destroy Poles 



Birds are destroying the telephone and 

 telegraph poles in the South and Southwest, 

 particularly in Texas, Arizona, and Califor- 

 nia. In some places fifty per cent, of all the 

 poles along the right of way have been rid- 

 dled by these innocent offenders, which be- 

 long to the woodpecker family. 



One of the Western Union officials, who 

 has recently returned from an inspection 

 through the West, reported having seen 

 twenty-five telephone poles with two or three 

 hundred holes drilled clear through them. 

 Some of the holes were three or four inches 

 in diameter. 



An officer of the Illinois Central Railroad 

 counted the white cedar telephone poles 

 along the right of way near Covington, 

 Tennessee, which had been affected by wood- 

 peckers, and found that out of 268 poles, no, 

 or forty-one per cent., had been bored. 



Many methods for preventing this dam- 

 age have been suggested, but probably the 

 most successful is preservation with creosote. 

 A line of creosoted poles, opposite the one 

 near Covington, was examined, and not a 

 single hole was found. When it is consid- 

 ered that creosote will not only prevent the 

 damage caused by the woodpecker, but also 

 protect the pole indefinitely against both in- 

 sects and decay, its great value as a preserv- 

 ative is apparent. 



Tree Planting in Kansas 



There are now 160,000 acres of planted 

 trees in central Kansas, where at one time 

 it was thought that trees could not be grown. 

 As the area in which agricultural crops can 

 be profitably grown is steadily extending, so 

 the limit of forest planting and tree culture 

 is widening always. 



The native timber in Kansas is also on 

 the increase; prairie fires no longer sweep 

 unchecked across the plains, and the strips 

 of forest along the rivers and in the ravines 

 and gullies are becoming broader every year. 



In some counties cottonwood was the only 

 tree planted for many years. Then boxelder, 

 honey locust, catalpa, osage orange, Russian 

 mulberry, black walnut, and red cedar were 

 tried, and all of them were found suitable 

 over the greater part of the state. 



Many persons desire a greater variety of 

 trees, for ornament or for profit. A gentle- 

 man living in Albilene, Dickinson County, 

 has planted a large number of trees and 



shrubs about his home and has proved that 

 many species from the forests of the Eastern 

 states and of the Old World are well adapt- 

 ed to the prairies of central Kansas. Some 

 of the trees with which he has had success 

 are persimmon, magnolia, basswood, June- 

 berry, black cherry, buckeye, dogwood, syca- 

 more, tulip-tree, pin oak, red oak, English 

 oak, European alder, camperdown elm, red- 

 bud, Paulownia, Chinese cork tree, ginkgo, 

 red-leaf maple, and cutleaf weeping birch. 

 These are not so valuable for windbreaks, 

 fence posts, and fuel as the trees ordinarily 

 planted for those purposes, and since they 

 are not so hardy, they require more care ; 

 but their ornamental value is very great, and 

 as towns grow older, the demand increases 

 for a variety of trees to replace the short- 

 lived cottonwoods. 



e % 



Goats Improving Forests 



Three thousand, angora goats herded out 

 on the brush-covered foothills of California 

 are going to do some hard work for Uncle 

 Sam during the coming two years beginning 

 this spring. The experiment will be unique 

 both as a stock-raising proposition and as an 

 engineering and tree-culture problem. 



The little white animals whose long wool 

 is of such great value are going to be put to 

 no less a task than constructing mile after 

 mile of fire line through the bushy chaparral 

 growth in the National Forests, saving much 

 labor by the United States Forest Service 

 engineers and making way for forestation by 

 merchantable trees. Not the least important 

 feature of the experiment, which for the first 

 two years will be confined to the Lassen 

 Forest, is the fact that the task will be per- 

 formed during the regular grazing by the 

 goats which will not even realize they are 

 doing a valuable work. 



Plans for carrying on the work are out- 

 lined in a cooperative agreement drawn up 

 by the Forest Service and the owner of a 

 band of angora goats grazing on the Las- 

 sen National Forest of California. The 

 scheme is to run fire lines parallel with the 

 contour of the slopes by cutting trails about 

 eighty rods apart. The trails are to serve 

 as guides for the angoras. They will graze 

 in each direction from the trails, killing, it 

 is estimated, a strip of brush about 300 yards 

 wide. The wide lanes cut out and grazed 

 by the goats will serve as ideal fire lines 

 in protecting the forest-covered lands lying 

 beyond and around the chaparral areas and 

 also make a place for reproduction of mer- 

 chantable trees. 



? & X 

 American and German Forests 



American forests, according to the experts 

 of the Department of Agriculture, are capa- 

 ble of yielding more wood to the acre, if well 

 handled, than the noted forests of Germany, 

 many of which net their owners from $2.50 



