246 



Garden and Forest. 



[May 2t, 1890. 



respect they are failures. They will not be pronounced 

 successful until their bulletins are accepted as standard 

 and authoritative in the literature of applied science. 



In the closing hours of the legislative session at Albany, 

 an effort was made to smuggle through, in the form of an 

 Amendment to another Act, a law authorizing the con- 

 struction of a straight and level speed-road through Cen- 

 tral Park. The measure was again defeated, for this was 

 not the first attempt to pass it ; but it will surely reappear 

 before succeeding legislatures, among the various schemes 

 to confiscate the grounds belonging to the people in the 

 interest of a special class. This particular project, how- 

 ever, is a singularly offensive one. Even if the track 

 could be constructed without interfering with the right of 

 entrance to the park by those who would be compelled to 

 cross it, its purpose is simply to afford pleasure to a few 

 rich men for a short time in the spring and in the fall. To 

 accomplish this, these men are asking the people to pay 

 for the devastation of the scenery of the park, which is its 

 fundamental value — scenery which it has cost millions of 

 money and the watchful care of long years to provide. No 

 other attack on the park contemplates the destruction of 

 so large a portion of its areaorthe introduction ofsomany 

 elements that are subversive of its design and purpose. 

 These owners of fast horses have little need of the park, 

 even if they have any feeling for its beauties, because they 

 are able to enjoy the sunshine of the south in winter, and 

 the cool breezes of the Berkshire Hills or of the seaside in 

 summer. But the city is full of people who may have less 

 money, but who have quite as much right to the use of 

 the park and a more refined appreciation of its value. The 

 park should be preserved for the people, and the whole 

 people, and not ruined in the interest of horses and their 

 drivers, however aristocratic may be the breeding of 

 either. 



The Cork Oak. 



THE Cork Oak, of which a portrait taken in Algeria appears 

 in our illustration on page 251, produces the most valua- 

 ble bark of all trees, with perhaps the exception of the Cin- 

 chona, and the money value of the world's product of cork is 

 greater than that of the quinine it consumes. It is a native of 

 the Mediterranean basin in northern Africa, in Corsica, Sicily, 

 southern France and the Iberian peninsula, across which it 

 extends to the shores of the Atlantic in Portugal and of 

 the Bay of Biscay. It is an evergreen species very much re- 

 sembling some varieties of the Ilex or Evergreen Oak of 

 southern Europe, with ovate-oblong blunt coriaceous leaves, 

 which are sometimes entire and sometimes sharply serrate, 

 and downy on the lower surface. It rarely attains a greater 

 height than twenty-five or thirty feet and trunks more than 

 two feet in diameter are exceptional. The value of the tree is 

 in its bark. The outer layer becomes, through annual addi- 

 tions on the inner surface, after the tree has attained a certain 

 age and size, a thick, soft, homogeneous mass possessing the 

 compressible and elastic properties upon which its economic 

 value depends. Cork is, in a certain sense, an artificial pro- 

 duction, as the bark naturally developed by the trees is of com- 

 paratively little value. This last is called " Virgin Cork," and is 

 stripped from the trees when they are from fifteen to twenty 

 years old. It is rough and woody in texture and is only valu- 

 able as a tanning material or for the coarsest kinds of rustic 

 work. The removal, however, of the natural bark causes the 

 development of another growth of much finer and more com- 

 pact quality. This is removed every eight or ten years, the 

 quality of cork improving with each successive stripping, and 

 the trees continuing to live and thrive under the operation for 

 more than a hundred years. The bark is stripped during the 

 months of July and August. Two cuts are made around the 

 stem, the first above the ground and the second directly un- 

 der the forking of the main branches. These cuts are then 

 connected by three or four longitudinal incisions which thus 

 divide the bark of the whole trunk into as many divisions. 

 Only the outer coating can be removed without destroying 

 the tree, and the greatest care is taken therefore not to injure 

 the inner bark. The cork is removed with the aid of the 

 wedge-shaped handle of the tool used in making the incisions. 

 The outer surface of the bark, as soon as it is stripped from 



the trees, is scraped and cleaned, and the pieces are then 

 flattened, heated slightly and pressed under stones on 

 a fiat surface. The heating chars the surface and closes the 

 pores, giving to the bark what is technically called "nerve." 

 In this state it is ready for manufacture or exportation. 



The amount of cork used in the world and the number of 

 uses for it are increasing enormously. It was not until the 

 end of the seventeenth century that bottles were stopped with 

 corks, although it would seem that its value for this pur- 

 pose was known to the Romans, as Horace ("Odes," III, 8) 

 speaks of 



"Corticem adstrictum pice dimovebit 

 Amphorse." 



The available forests of Cork-trees are already relatively 

 extensive, although hardly sufficient to supply the demands 

 now made on them, or which as the world grows in prosperity 

 must be made on them, for there is hardly any end to the uses 

 for cork, and none of the substitutes for it .which have 

 yet been tried are very satisfactory or promise to take its 

 place to any great extent. The latest estimates of existing areas 

 of available Cork Oak forests make their extent from 3,300,000 

 to 3,500,000 acres, of which about one-half, including those on 

 its African possessions, belongs to France.* 



The wood of the Cork Oak is heavy, coarse-grained, and of 

 a yellow-brown color ; it shrinks and warps badly in season- 

 ing and decays rapidly when exposed to the action of the at- 

 mosphere. It has little value in the arts but furnishes a useful 

 fuel and makes good charcoal. The inner bark is rich in tan- 

 nin and trees too old or unfit to produce cork are cut for the 

 sake of the inner bark. 



The Cork Oak is an interesting tree to Americans, as its cul- 

 tivation now seems destined to become an important industry 

 in California, where the climate and the soil in many parts of 

 the state are admirably suited to produce it. This is not a 

 mere theory, as trees have been growing now for several years 

 in California and have already produced crops of cork of ex- 

 cellent quality. It is probable that the tree will grow rather 

 more rapidly in California than it does in its native country, 

 although the quality of the soil, the exposure in which the 

 trees are placed, local climate and the treatment which the 

 trees receive will influence, of course, the rapidity with which 

 the bark is developed. In Africa it is found that the trees 

 which grow the most rapidly produce bark of the poorest 

 quality, and that within certain limits the slower the trees 

 grow the more valuable the product, provided the growth is 

 not too slow, in which case the bark loses some of the elas- 

 ticity which makes it valuable. The conditions which influ- 

 ence the development of cork are so numerous and compli- 

 cated that the product of all the trees in a grove or forest can 

 never attain the same uniformity of thickness or quality in 

 any given time. This is so well understood in the countries 

 where cork is grown that the best method of harvesting has 

 been found to be to go over the forest every two or three 

 years and remove the bark from such trees as are covered 

 with merchantable cork and not to strip all the trees at the 

 same time. All these matters must of course be considered 

 in connection with planting forests of the Cork Oak in Califor- 

 nia. The planting and care of such forests in Portugal and 

 Spain has long been an important industry, and there is no 

 reason why they may not be made so in California, where the 

 local consumption of cork is already enormous, although the 

 wine industry there is hardly more than in its infancy. 



We are indebted to Mr. Francis Skinner, of Boston, for the 

 photograph from which the illustration of the Algerian tree 

 has been made. 



The Cedar of Mount Atlas. 



'X'HE classical Cedar of antiquity has, it is well known, be- 

 ■*■ come exceedingly rare on Mount Lebanon, where it 

 exists, outside of the famous grove of about 350 trees, in a few 

 remote and rarely visited stations only. There is nothing 

 more beautiful or more venerable than the little forest of 

 Cedars standing out dark and green on the naked and forbid- 

 ding background of the high Lebanon range. Each tree, with 

 its original and expressive aspect, seems to relate a history 

 full of memories. But this famous grove of Cedars leaves 

 upon the visitor a sad impression, for no one who sees it can 

 divest himself of the idea that the venerable trees are perish- 

 ing. The nine old trees are mutilated and injured less by time 

 and the severity of the climate than by the carelessness of 

 shepherds and pilgrims, who break off the branches and often 



* "Notice sur les forets de la Tunisie," Exposition Universalle de 18 

 Tunise. Direction des Forets. 



