o 



92 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 449. 



for plant-food, and has them for sale in small glass 

 bottles. We have no means of estimating the value of the 

 alleged discovery, but it has been considered of sufficient 

 importance to be made the subject of more than one 

 paper read before the Royal Agricultural Society of Eng- 

 land. It is claimed that the soil can be inoculated wilh 

 these organisms for the modest sum of $1.25 an acre, 

 or the seed itself may be inoculated before it is sown 

 quite as cheaply. Of course, it may be premature 

 to place much confidence in this new method of se- 

 curing fertility, but it has long been considered probable 

 that some means of utilizing the stores of nitrogen in the 

 air could be devised, and we may reasonably expect 

 more wonderful discoveries since so many men of science 

 are engaged in the experiment stations of the world in 

 studying the laws of plant-life. Certainly it cannot be 

 assumed that the further cheapening of food-production is 

 an unmixed evil, and yet until the cultivators of the soil 

 can adjust themselves to the new state of things this would 

 certainly affect their prosperity. Synthetic chemistry has 

 gone so far as to prophesy a time when fruits and vegeta- 

 bles can be produced at little expense in a laboratory from 

 their original elements, instead of waiting for the slow pro- 

 cesses of nature to perfect them. Even if this dream were 

 realized it might be a blessing and not a curse, and yet it 

 would bring temporary disaster upon the tillers of the soil. 

 We have little expectation that the time is at hand when 

 man will cease to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, 

 but we hardly ought to complain if he earns it with less 

 sweat than he once did. Certain it is that great changes 

 in the lines we have indicated are in progress, and they 

 cannot be arrested by any legislation which changes tariffs 

 or affects the volume of currency. Professor Bailey is right 

 in saying that if this depression continues, its first effect 

 will be to refine the gold — that is, to drive out of the busi- 

 ness all but the most skillful producers of crops. Mean- 

 time the farmer must be alert to adjust himself to his 

 new surroundings ; he must be content as manufacturers 

 and merchants are to make a living and keep out of debt ; 

 he must do his work intelligently and avail himself of 

 every new aid which science offers ; he must keep his land 

 in good heart, grow only as much as he can grow with 

 some degree of profit, live quietly and economically, and 

 then wait. 



An Experimental Grove of White Pine. 



MR. B. E. FERNOW, Chief of the Bureau of Forestry, 

 referring to a grove of Pines with which I have been 

 experimenting for more than twenty years, says in Gar- 

 den and Forest (see p. 202) : 



Mr. Lyman has a growth of White Pine two-thirds of an acre 

 in extent, fifty to fifty-five years of age, which lie has thinned, 

 so that in 1S94 only 146 trees remained, or 223 to the acre. 

 Most of his trees are over ten inches in diameter, at least six- 

 teen of them are over fourteen inches, and the best measured 

 22.2 inches, the height being seventy to eighty feet. The cal- 

 culated volume corresponds to a production of 7,185 cubic 

 feet of wood an acre, which, under very careful practice, might 

 cut 30,000, board measure. 



In view of the vast value and importance of the White 

 Pine and the rapidity with which a timber crop of it can 

 be grown, even on land deemed almost worthless, I have 

 been experimenting on a small scale to ascertain its rate of 

 growth and the best treatment of the trees while growing. 

 In this study I have been disappointed at finding so little 

 aid from books. I want to find out how to grow a crop of 

 timber on poor, cheap land as well as the best farmers in 

 the Corn belt can grow a crop of corn. I have some four 

 hundred acres of mixed young growth from twenty-three 

 years to thirty-five years of age, and most of this has been 

 left to nature. I have thinned some twelve acres of small 

 White Pines and pruned some of them. The little grove 

 referred to by Mr. Fernow is upon a deserted farm which I 

 bought in January, 1870, and, as I remember, the first time 

 I noticed it was a few years later. The trees are close by 



the highway, less than six miles from the large village of 

 Farmington, less than a mile and a half from a' railroad 

 station, and fourteen, twenty and twenty-five miles respec- 

 tively from the cities of Rochester, Somerswoith and Dover ; 

 yet this grove with its 108 square rods of land could not prob- 

 ably have been sold at that time for much, if any, over one 

 dollar, and, perhaps, for not over fifty cents. A man thinned 

 the trees, receiving the thinnings as pay, and they made 

 stakes, kindling-wood and, perhaps, a few light top poles 

 for fence. They ought to have been thinned earlier. They 

 were then left either live or seven years, which was too long, 

 before they were thinned again. They have been irregularly 

 thinned from time to time since, and the pruning has been 

 equally irregular. Standing more than forty miles from 

 my home, they have not been as well cared for as they 

 ought to have been. They have no limbs within twenty 

 feet of the ground, and the first twenty feet from the ground 

 will make very good boards, worth, ifcutnow,at least twice 

 the price of inch-thick box-boards. The larger these trees 

 become the more clear lumber there will be in them, and 

 its value per foot will increase with their size. I have 

 other young Pines on the same farm which I have pruned, 

 so that the logs from the first twenty feet of their bodies 

 will be perfectly free of knots to within about two inches 

 of their hearts, and these knots will be so small, free from 

 blackness and sound, that they will scarcely be noticed in 

 the boards. The cost of the several primings of each tree 

 will, I judge from my experience, amount to about one and 

 a half cents. It would be a fast average growth with prop- 

 erly thinned Pines if they were two feet in diameter at 

 seventy-five years of age. The most profitable number to 

 the acre at this period of their growth I have not satisfactorily 

 determined. Perhaps 130, or possibly 150, and the amount 

 of lumber from 60,000 to 80,000 feet, board measure, with 

 all of that from the butt logs of very superior quality and 

 the remainder sound, with the ordinary amount of knots. 

 The amount of wood, fencing, shingle stuff, box-board logs 

 and timber cut out in thinning such a forest or plantation 

 is immense. The saving in cost of getting lumber from 

 such a clean forest, where every tree is a Pine fit to cut, 

 instead of having to cut paths through trees and brush, 

 and break them through deep snows to get scattering trees 

 from among mixed growths is a very important item. For 

 this and other reasons I prefer to have unmixed timber lots 

 and no undergrowth. 



Mr. Fernow and I do not agree as to the amount of 

 timber to the acre upon my poorly cared for experimental 

 grove (see page 202). In June, 1894, his assistant, Mr. 

 Carey, measured the trees and sent his figures to Mr. 

 Fernow, who, in a letter dated six days later, wrote, ''prac- 

 tically you will not get more than 10,800 feet, board 

 measure," on the 108 square rods, which is 16,000 feet to 

 the acre. In the same letter he expressed the opinion that 

 I ought to have four times as many trees on the plot as 

 actually stood there. 



From Mr. Fernow's estimate of 10,800 feet, board 

 measure, for these 146 trees, or 16,000 to the acre, in his 

 letter to me dated June 29th, 1894, he has raised his esti- 

 mate in Garden and Forest, page 203, to 30,000 feet to the 

 acre. At this ratio his next estimate would. I think, be too 

 high, but nearer the true amount. Cutting one of the 

 largest and one of the smallest of the trees growing on the 

 inside of this grove, I had them sawed into inch boards 

 with a thick circular mill saw, and the two made 500 feet. 

 In my judgment these trees would be a fair average for all, 

 and if so, they would saw out 54 750 feet to the acre. I 

 reckon only 219 trees to the acre at the rate of 146 on 108 

 square rods To be within bounds, I estimate 50,000 feet 

 to the acre. In our Agricultural Report, written in February, 

 1895, I estimated the age of these trees at about forty-eight 

 years. I now count it fifty years. The youngest are less 

 than forty, but the larger one sawed had fifty-four rings in 

 the low-cut stump, and, as I have learned by observation 

 and by sowing Pine-seeds, that Pines start slowly, I think 

 it likely that the seed started three years before it formed 



