AMERICAN EDITOR. 329 



NOTE KK. 



POLLARDING TREKS, page 267. 



The word pollard is but little used in America; it is 

 derived from the verb to poll, or lop, the heads of trees. 

 With us, the custom so much condemned by the author, 

 is unknown ; but it is no just sense of the value of wood, 

 no wise spirit of true economy, which causes the difference. 

 On the contrary, if our timber is not mutilated in this 

 way, it is simply owing to a custom still more culpable 

 and wasteful wherever a branch is needed, a whole tree 

 will be felled. Often has the writer seen a fine chestnut 

 hewn down by some careless lad, merely for the nuts of 

 one season's growth ; frequently have we found oaks, or 

 maples of good size, cut at the root in the same way, for 

 the sake of the wild grapes which hung entwined among 

 their higher branches ; and on one occasion, we have seen 

 a noble pine, a hundred and fifty feet in height, the growth 

 perchance of several centuries, felled only to reach a hive 

 of bees, which had taken refuge in a hollow branch. 



NOTE LL. 



ICE FLOATING, page 271. 



Absurd as the notion is, that the ice in our lakes and 

 rivers sinks in spring, yet there are not wanting people 

 who firmly believe it. Not long since, the writer chanced 

 to meet in print a traveler's story, evidently credited by 

 the individual who asserted it, that the ice in Lake Cham- 

 plain invariably disappeared in this way, sinking to the 

 bottom of the lake every spring. Whether to rise again 

 the following winter, the reader was not informed. In 

 fact, it would be quite as rational to expect the snow which 

 lies so long on our frozen rivers and lakes most winters, 

 CC2 



