4 o . EUCAL YPTUS. 



cut when the sap is least active, and should be worked 

 into its final form of fire wood, boards, etc., as soon as 

 possible after it is felled. I have seen blue gum logs 

 become so hard that the cost, from increased difficulty of 

 handling, ate up more than the final value. In cutting blue 

 gums for piles, it is probable that the reverse course will 

 be best that is, when the sap is active. The wharfinger 

 of the Port of San Francisco assures me that a pile cut 

 when the sap is flowing sa)^ in the spring will last three 

 to five times longer than when cut dormant. 



The best success with the blue gum in California has 

 been in situations where moisture is not far from the sur- 

 face and where the ocean influence has affected the air, such 

 as in the great Eucalyptus groves south of L,os Angeles 

 City. In many places this tree does well singly and in single 

 lines, and it will furnish a continuous supply of fire wood, 

 as on the borders of fields and orchards that are cultivated, 

 when it will amount to little or nothing in a solid planta- 

 tion. Thus, a new comer to some of our interior mesas 

 will see with his own eyes, splendid specimens of blue 

 gums in gardens, near a ditch or reservoir, or he may 

 observe, by the side 1 of cultivated fields, long rows of 

 strong looking trees. Acting upon this, he may plant a 

 forest of blue gums and get only a spindling, stunted 

 growth, better than nothing, but that is about all one can 

 say. Eucalyptus globulus will amount to little in groves 

 where the soil is light or the subsoil dry. A continuous 

 supply of fire wood can be obtained from blue gum by 

 pollarding or cutting the tree back every three or four 

 years. This Eucalyptus stands such treatment especially 

 well. Some of the other species do not take kindly to 

 this cutting back, but I believe none of them make the 



