244 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



goose is as much as the worth of her nest, and 

 there ought to be in her nest twenty-four goslings. 

 [Broods have degenerated since then !] The worth 

 of each gosling is a halfpenny, or a sheaf of barley 

 until it lays, and after it lays each one is a legal 

 penny in value: thus a brood goose is twelvepence 

 in value. 



"A hen is one penny in value, and a cock is 

 two hens in value. Every chicken is a sheaf of 

 oats or a farthing in value, until it shall roost; af- 

 ter that a halfpenny until it shall lay or shall crow." 



— — — i ■ 



CANADIAN TIMBER AT THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 



The Gardeners' Chronicle alludes as follows to 

 some of the specimens of Canadian timber shown 

 at the Great International Exhibition: 



The visitor to the International Exhibition who 

 shall seek for Timber, will see on his right in the 

 distance, as soon as he enters the Eastern Dome, a 

 noble pile reaching nearly to the roof of the tran- 

 sept. "When he approaches the pile, he will find 

 that its base is surrounded by most admirable ex- 

 amples of what Canada can produce; for he is 

 within our Great North East American colony, the 

 pride of England, the envy of the United Sfates. 

 There is not such another display from the New 

 "World ; and when we consider how near is Canada 

 to our own shores, the rapidity of intercommuni- 

 cation between us, and the enormous wealth which 

 this "trophy" represents, it is difficult to avoid 

 feelings of something like triumph at such a dem- 

 onstration of British power. 



To planters in this country the exhibition of 

 timber in Canada is particularly interesting, be- 

 cause not a tree is represented in it with which we 

 are unfamiliar. We can grow them all on our own 

 estates if we think it worth while; and, given 

 time enough, we can grow them as well. More es- 

 pecially does it concern those who already possess 

 old specimens of Canadian trees to study here the 

 evidence of what they may come to. Take for ex- 

 ample black walnut, which grows magnificently 

 even near London. There is one specimen (No. 

 53) which is 4 feet 7 inches in diameter, exclusive 

 of its bark. Such timber can be had in Quebec 

 for £71 ($355) per 1000 feet cube. The specimen 

 to which we now refer must be about 400 years 

 old. 



North American elms thrive perfectly with us. 

 They are, however, we believe, exclusively Ulmus 

 Americana and fulva that have been introduced. 

 "We now see that another kind, called the Bock 

 elm, or Ulmus racemosa, is superior to them and 

 to our own ; the wood being finer in the grain and 

 less brittle. Of this there is a specimen about 2 

 feet eight inches in diameter. 



"Weymouth pines are among the commonest of 

 our hardy Conifers. They yield the " pinewood " 

 of carpenters. Little however do our foresters 

 know of the huge specimens that swarm in Canada. 

 "Average height, 140 to 160 feet; average diame- 

 ter, 3 to .4 feet ; but common near Lake Erie 5 to 6 

 feet in diameter and 200 feet high ; or even in some 

 cases 22 feet in circumference, 220 feet hight, bare 

 of branches for 120 feet to the first limb." Such 

 monsters are, however, too big to exhibit, and 

 Canada modestly limits herself to about 2 feet 10 

 inches, or 3 feet in diameter. 



Then there is Plnus resinosa, or the Bed pine, 

 which dislikes our eastern climate, 3 feet 6 inches 

 in diameter, which is about twice its usual size. 

 But there is no enconragement to plant it here. 



The ash of Canada (Fraxinus Americana), fam- 

 ous for its toughness and strength, invaluable for 

 handles of axes and other implements, is displayed 

 in its small forms as well as in the giant propor- 

 tions that it assumes when full grown. One round, 

 with 305 circles of annual growth, is 2 feet 10 

 inches in diameter, an admirable example of tim- 

 ber. 



There is oak, too, black (Quercus tinctoria), red 

 {Q. rubra), and white (Q. alba), the latter little in- 

 ferior to British heart of oak, and not far off 4 feet 

 in diameter. This tree, as much at home with us 

 as with Canadians, is said to be sometimes 21 feet 

 round ! in Western Canada. 



Then we have Occidental plane, or button wood, 

 4 feet through ; tulip tree, or white wood, 3^ feet, 

 and basswood or American lime, more than 2 feet, 

 all excellent for cabinet and joiners' work, though 

 unfit to bear exposure to weather. 



Add to these the numerous specimens of the fair 

 growth of American chestnut, hickories, maples, 

 beech, birch, hornbeam, hemlock, spruce, tamarac 

 or American larch, and he who would thoroughly 

 understand the nature of Canadian timber has a 

 field of serious study hitherto unexampled: how 

 serious, in a mercantile point of view, may be 

 gathered from the fact that " Canada exports annu- 

 ally about 30,000,000 cubic feet of timber in the 

 rough state, and about 400,000,000 feet, board 

 measure, of sawn timber. The revenue derived 

 by the Province, during 1860, for timber cut in the 

 forests, amounted to about $500,000." It appears 

 that of the 60 or 70 varieties of woods in its for- 

 ests, there are usually only five or six kinds which 

 go to make up these exports so vast in quantity ; 

 the remaining fifty or sixty timber trees are left to 

 perish or are burned as a nuisance, to get them out 

 of the way. 



m »-^— 



THE I ENGLISH COLONIES AT THE GREAT EXHI- 

 BITION. 



The London Agricultural Gazette, in its account 

 of the International Exhibition, speaks as follows 

 of the products of "colonial agriculture": 



Corn and wine, "milk and honey," cotton, wool, 

 and flax and timber — colonial agriculture is a much 

 larger subject than that of Britain only. " Here 

 are lands and seas, spice lands, corn lands, timber 

 lands, overarched by zodiacs and stars — clasped by 

 many sounding seas — wide spaces of the Maker's 

 Building fit for the cradle yet of mighty nations 

 and their sciences and heroisms. Fertile conti- 

 nents still inhabited by wild beasts are mines into 

 which all the distressed populations of Europe 

 might pour themselves and make at once an old 

 world and a new world human." This magnilo- 

 quent description of her colonies, which Carlisle 

 put into the mouth of the mother country some 

 ten or twelve years ago, is already becoming super- 

 annuated. The mighty nations hrve since that 

 time actually grown into being — estimated only by 

 population and still more by industry and its fruits, 

 Canada and the Australian colonies may be already 

 so described. These fruits are shown in great pro- 



