130 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 12, il 



is marvelous. Trees only forty-five years old have an average 

 trunk circumference at three feet from the ground of five 

 feet eleven inches, and an average height of more than sixty 

 feet. The actual money value of these trees is from six to 

 eight dollars. In another plantation made in 1845 me trunks 

 have an average of four feet eleven inches, and in still another 

 made as late as 1852 they have an average trunk circumference 

 of five feet three inches. If the development of the Red Oak 

 continues to be as satisfactory in the future as it has been, we 

 shall be able to show in Belgium trees at least three and a half 

 feet in diameter and nearly one hundred feet tall. 



The density of the wood of Quercus rubra, as compared with 

 our native Oak, Quercus Robur, is: Q. rubra, 391; Q. Robur, yj"j. 

 The comparison of these two totals shows that the wood of 

 the American species is harder than that of the European. In 

 the trials which have been made to determine the value of the 

 wood of the American tree grown here, in carriage-building 

 and in cabinet-making, its great value has been amply demon- 

 strated. Where the native Oak remains dwarfed and stunted 

 owing to a soil too light for its best development, the Red Oak 

 grows with luxuriance ; and its introduction into those parts of 

 Belgium where the soil is light and sandy is a benefit which all 

 land-holders now recognize; and it appears evident that in a few 

 years the American Oak will have replaced the native species 

 in many parts of the country. 



Quercus palustris seems destined, like the Red Oak, to be 

 a very useful tree here. There are plantations in this country 

 already sixty years old, containing trees with trunks more than 

 six feet in circumference. It appears, therefore, that this 

 species grows more rapidly even than the Red Oak; and it is 

 noticed that the trunk rises more rapidly than the trunks of 

 other American Oaks. There are some beautiful plantations 

 of ihis tree along the highways of Limbourg, admirable ex- 

 amples of luxuriant vegetation and promising the best results 

 for the future. It is now proposed by the government to make 

 trials with Quercus tinctoria and Quercus Phellos. Possibly 

 these facts, the result of experiments in a foreign country, may 

 have some interest for the American readers of your journal. 



Mons, Belgium. Alfred Wesmael. 



The Waverly Oaks. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — I have read, with much interest, the editorial in 

 Garden and Forest for February 19th, upon the Waverly 

 Oaks. I have met with no such interesting group of Oaks as 

 these. Their location so near the picturesque cascade of 

 Beaver Brook, and upon a supposed local terminal moraine, 

 their grand proportions, their undoubted great age — all about 

 them is worthy of marked attention. It seems to me that 

 their destruction would be an act of vandalism. The sugges- 

 tion which you emphasize, that the trees should be preserved 

 by setting apart the ground containing them as a public 

 park, is certainly a wise one ; and if the park coidd include 

 the "Cascade" with the glade below it, together, it would be 

 one of the choicest bits of public ground in the vicinity of 

 Boston. 



It may not be inappropriate to quote the dimensions of a 

 few White Oaks in Rhode Island, from data which I made 

 and published ten years ago. One of these is on the Owen 

 farm, in Pawtucket, in an open lot on the Power Road from 

 Providence to Pawtucket. The tree has had opportunity for 

 development in the open ground for a century or more, and 

 it is noticeable for its great spread of ninety feet across. The 

 six lower limbs are thrust out nearly parallel to the slope of 

 the ground, and one of them is fifty feet long. The support- 

 ing power of these massive members must be enormous. 

 The body is small in proportion to the size of the tree, being 

 only nine feet in circumference at four feet from the ground. 



Another remarkable tree stands just over the state line in 

 Massachusetts at Munro's Tavern. In 1858 its circumference, 

 three feet from the bottom, was sixteen feet three inches. 

 There is a tradition, which seems authentic, that a company 

 of soldiers, returning from service, camped about the trunk 

 of this tree and spent the night under its protection. The 

 Catholic Oak, at Lonsdale, girthed, in 1878, fourteen feet at 

 four feet from the ground. 



Providence, R. I. L. W. Russell. 



Prairie Forestry. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — In a recent number of Garden and Forest appeared 

 an article in which the writer held, very properly, that tree- 

 planting is not forestry. And yet, in the vast prairie regions 



of the country, where the need of forests is more apparent, 

 though not so great in reality, as among the mountains, the 

 sources whence all our great rivers flow, forestry must mean 

 tree-planting for many years to come. To the people of* the 

 western prairies — the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and 

 western Minnesota — the word forestry has become synony- 

 mous with tree-planting, and conveys no other meaning. It is 

 indeed fortunate that this is so. The prairies can never know 

 the primitive meaning of the word forestry until they cease to 

 be wind-swept. Every year the treeless belt becomes nar- 

 rower, through constant planting on its eastern border ; and 

 while it is true that the prairies will never be forested by the 

 individual enterprise of the farmer, it is equally true that the 

 whole aspect of the west has been changed within the past 

 twenty years. Planted trees have clothed the naked landscape, 

 and homes have been sheltered and the growth of fruit made 

 possible. In crossing the state of Iowa from Dubuque to 

 Sioux City the traveler sees a wonderful example of what 

 forestry means on the prairies. In the eastern part of the 

 state native woods abound along the streams, but after leaving 

 the valley of the Cedar, plantations become a feature of the 

 landscape. Every house seems embowered in trees, suggest- 

 ing shelter and comfort for the inmates. Farther west these 

 groves decrease in size and number until, beyond the Des 

 Moines River, the prairies are almost as bare as they are in cen- 

 tral Dakota. Every year the groves increase in numberand in 

 size, and if prairie foresters in Iowa continue to plant trees in 

 the next decade as in the past, the state will have almost gen- 

 uine forest conditions. It will at least have solved for its open 

 prairies the difficult problem of protection from wind, and 

 they may do much toward eliminating the disastrous droughts 

 that have been such a burden to agriculture during recent 

 years. 

 Brooking 6 , s. d. Ckas. A. Keffer. 



Populus certinensis. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — Under this name we received from the Arnold Arbor- 

 etum, a number of years ago, cuttings of a Poplar which 

 promises to be very valuable on the high, dry prairies of the 

 north-west and west, as it maintains perfect health of foliage 

 and makes a clean, rapid, upright growth where the Cotton- 

 wood and other native trees of the bottom-lands of our streams 

 utterly fail to live. I speak of it at this time, hoping to discover 

 the origin of this name. I do not find it in Koch's " Dendrologie " 

 or in any other work in our libraries, and it appears to be 

 identical with, or very closely related to, Populus Petrovsky, as 

 sent us by Director Arnold, of Moscow. It also appears to be 

 very closely related to the species known in Russia as Populus 

 Wobsky. As this tree has come to stay in the west, I am 

 anxious to determine its origin and its correct name. 



Ames, Iowa. J . L. Budd. 



Periodical Literature. 



'THE February issue of the Kew Bulletin of Miscellaneous 

 -*- Information contains an article on the Manufacture of 

 Quinine in India, in which the new oil process for manufactur- 

 ing sulphate of quinine is explained. The success of this pro- 

 cess is a matter of some importance, for if Cinchona-alkaloids 

 can be cheaply extracted from the bark at the place where it 

 is grown, a great saving will be made in the cost of transporta- 

 tion to Europe and America. Mr. C. H. Wood, late govern- 

 ment quinologist to the government of Bengal, in an appendix 

 to this paper, sums up the chief advantages of preparing 

 quinine in this manner as follows: "First, the alkaloids are 

 completely extracted from the bark in a much greater state of 

 purity, so that the final operations for obtaining pure and 

 finished products are much simplified. Second, that the whole 

 process of extraction can be performed at common tempera- 

 tures. Third, that the apparatus and appliances required are 

 all of a simple character and are well suited for use on the 

 plantations." 



The low price of Cinchona-bark, quinine and other Cinchona- 

 alkaloids is explained by the immense exportation of bark 

 from Ceylon. It is only a few years, comparatively, since the 

 Cinchona-tree was first introduced into Asia through the efforts 

 of the British government, but the quinine raised in the gov- 

 ernment plantations of Ceylon, India and Java already far ex- 

 ceeds the amount produced in the native forests of the Andes; 

 and therefore regulates the price of the product. 



The introduction and cultivation of the Cinchona in Asia is 

 one of the most triumphant agricultural successes the world 

 has ever seen, so far as the consumers of quinine are 



