108 Botanical Department. [Bulletin 108 



gunwales, which he assured me had been in use twelve years. He afterwards in- 

 formed me that he had seen catalpa trees, perfectly sound, back of New Madrid, 

 on the Mississippi river, that had been killed by the eruptions of 1811. This 

 statement was too incredible to make a note of, but it has since been confirmed 

 by respectable citizens of New Madrid, who stated also that all the catalpa trees 

 were killed at that time." 



Dr. John Warder furnishes corroborative testimony to the same 

 point in his article on "The Western Catalpa Tree," (Jour. Am. Ag. 

 Ass'n, 1881) page 98, as follows: 



"Near New Madrid there are many fence-posts which have stood and remained 

 perfectly sound for long periods, twenty, thirty and even forty years. The story of 

 the standing catalpa trees that were killed by the disturbances and the submerg- 

 ence of land, caused by the earthquake of 1811, which we have all been disposed 

 to doubt, is, at this day, fully confirmed by ocular demonstration. In the lagoon 

 there stand the broken shafts of noble trees ; all other species submerged by the 

 same catastrophe have crumbled and fallen into the water long ago, but these si- 

 lent monuments of that convulsion still remain, not as living witnesses, but as 

 dead memorials of the disturbance of level which caused their death, and their 

 now approaching dissolution; but there have they stood seventy years, under 

 conditions most favorable to decay." 



In Mr. Barney's earlier pamphlet, page 9, he reprints a letter con- 

 tributed by him to the Hallway Age December 11, 1876, in which 

 reference is made to a Mr. Wm. A. Arthur, a former superintendent 

 of the Illinois Central railroad. The latter had journeyed with a 

 friend up the Ohio river twenty miles from Cairo, 111., and on a farm 

 belonging to the latter's father reported finding "a gate-post which, he 

 stated, he had assisted his father to put in position forty-six years 

 previously. They dug around it and examined it carefully to the 

 bottom, and found it as sound as the day it was planted ; no signs of 

 decay whatever." 



These citations sufficiently indicate the extraordinary durability 

 of catalpa timber in contact with the soil. 



It is to be noted that the durability of catalpa timber is a quality 

 of the mature wood, and that very young or unseasoned timber, or 

 timber that has been cut during the early growing season, shows no 

 special immunity to the attacks of fungi. Doctor Burrill writes from 

 the University of Illinois : 



" We find that trees four or five inches in diameter, cut green and used as 

 posts, decay rapidly in the ground. Indeed, I have no evidence that young ca- 

 talpa trees make in any case durable posts. On the other hand, the mature 

 wood is exceedingly resistant to decay." 



Mr. Geo. W. Tincher, of Topeka, Kan,, furnishes the following in- 

 formation to the same point : 



"During the year 1900 my attention was called to some catalpa posts that had 

 been in use for only four or five years, and were rotted off at the ground. The 



