386 



Garden and Forest. 



[August 6, 1890. 



Associated with it is usually found Phacelia Orcuttiana, an- 

 other so-called " fire weed " which is likely to prove a wel- 

 come acquisition to the garden on account of its masses of 

 white flowers with conspicuous yellow centres. This Phacelia 

 grows into a tall, stately plant, branching freely from the base. 



It is an interesting problem why the seeds of these hand- 

 some plants should lie dormant so many years in the soil, 

 awaiting the — to them — life-saving, destructive fire. After 

 once starting into existence the seed does not seem to require 

 to pass through the ordeal of fire before growing, for the 

 second year after a fire they appear in greater abundance than 

 the first. Gradually, however, as other plants get re-established 

 on the ground these become fewer and fewer, until other 

 vegetation overcomes them, and their seeds again lie dormant 

 in the soil awaiting another deluge of flame. 



San Diego, C.il. C. R. OrClltt. 



Clematis Montana. — A charming picture of a porch cov- 

 ered with this climber, in a recent issue of The Garden, of 

 London, reminds us that the plant, although very rarely seen 

 in gardens in this country, is perfectly hardy here, and that it 

 is one of the very best of the early-blooming vines. Splendid 

 shoots wreathed with the clusters of large white flowers were 

 shown a month ago at one of the weekly exhibitions of the 

 Massachusetts Horticultural Society by Mr. Joseph Clark, gar- 

 dener of Henry L. Higginson, of Manchester, Massachusetts. 

 Clematis montana is a native of Nepaul, whence it was intro- 

 duced into English gardens as long ago as 1831. It is a ram- 

 pant grower, producing, if the plant is severely pruned imme- 

 diately after it has done flowering, shoots sometimes six or 

 eight feet long, which flower the following year from end 

 to end. As the writer in The Garden says, "its early bloom- 

 ing character, fitness for all ordinary soils, and complete hard- 

 iness, save in very cold spots, have raised it to the position it 

 holds in the garden. It must be a poor place that has not 

 rambling over a veranda, trellis, arch or wall Clematis mon- 

 tana," The specimen forming the subject of The Garden 

 illustration has been planted for over thirty years in its present 

 position, blooming freely every year, and covering the whole 

 front of a house. It is planted in a border close to the wall 

 and obtains little surface water. It is cut back once or twice a 

 year. 



The Forest. 



The Sihlwald.— II. 



IN the organization of a normally stocked forest the object of 

 first importance is the cutting each year of an amount of 

 timber equal to the total annual increase over the whole area, 

 and no more. If is further desirable in any long settled com- 

 munity that the forests be so managed as to yield a measurably 

 constant return in material. Otherwise difficulties in the sup- 

 ply of labor and the disposal of the produce make themselves 

 felt, and the value of the forest to its owner tends to decrease. 

 This is especially true in the case of the Sihlwald, whose mills 

 derive their raw material exclusively from the forest to which 

 they belong, and whose supply of labor is limited to the men 

 whom it furnishes with steady employment. Either excess or 

 deficit in the annual production implies loss. 



In order to attain this steadiness of yield it is obviously 

 necessary that a certain number of trees become fit to cut 

 each year. The Sihlwald has accordingly been so "organized" 

 that areas of equal productive capacity are covered by stocks 

 of every age, from last year's seedling to the mature tree. 

 These age-gradations succeed each other in a series so regu- 

 lar that in an hour's walk one may pass from the lot just cut 

 over through a forest of steadily increasing age to the trees 

 which have reached the limit of the rotation of ninety years. 

 Three such units of organization are present in the Sihlwald, 

 but since the character of the Fraumunsterforst, as the forest 

 on the right bank of the Sihl is called, separates it distinctly 

 from the much greater area of the Sihlwald proper, and since 

 the two divisions of this last differ only in unessential matters 

 over which the treatment bas no control, it will be necessary 

 to speak of only one of them. The working plan for the 

 Lower Sihlwald, then, prescribes for the forest which it controls 

 the operations of what Dr. Schlich.has called in his Manual of 

 Forestry " The Shelter- wood Compartment System." It may 

 not be without interest to follow the life history of a compart- 

 ment in which this system is carried out. 



After the mature trees had been felled and removed from 

 the area which furnished the yield of the Lower Sihlwald last 

 year the thick crop of seedlings which had grown up under 

 their shelter was finally exposed to the full influence of the 

 light and air. The felling and rough shaping of the timber, 



the piling of logs and cord-wood and the trampling of the men 

 had combined with the crisis of exposure to destroy the new 

 crop in places and create a few small blanks. Here, as soon 

 as the disappearance of the snow had made it possible, groups 

 of the kinds of seedlings necessary to preserve the mixture 

 or destined to increase the proportion of the more valuable 

 species were planted. The operation, necessarily an expen- 

 sive one, is justified by the greater resistance of a mixed forest 

 to nearly all the calamities which may befall standing timber. 

 Simultaneously with the planting the Willows, Hazels and 

 other worthless species were destroyed, as well as the "pre- 

 existing seedlings," whose larger growth, according to the dis- 

 puted theory held at the Sihlwald, would damage their younger 

 neighbors more by their shade than their greater volume 

 would increase the final yield of timber. The incipient forest, 

 then, practically uniform in age and size and broken by no 

 blanks which the growth of a year or two will not conceal, is 

 fairly started on the course of healthy development, which it is 

 to continue undisturbed until it reaches the age of fifteen years. 



At this point occurs the first of a series of thinnings which 

 follow each other at intervals of seven or eight years, until 

 the trees have entered the last third of their existence. There is, 

 perhaps, no silvicultural question more in dispute than this of 

 the time and degree of thinning which will yield the best results 

 in quality and quantity of timber. The method pursued at the 

 Sihlwald, consecrated by habit and success, gives ample space 

 for the healthy development of the crown from a very early 

 age wifliout admitting light enough through the leaf-canopy 

 to sustain an undergrowth until the trees are nearly ready to 

 give place to their descendants. Such shrubs or seedlings as 

 still appear, thanks to a shade-bearing temperament, are sys- 

 tematically cut out. It may be strongly doubted whether such 

 a policy might safely be applied on soil less moist than that of 

 the Sihlwald; but here, at least, the trees reach the age of sixty 

 years, tall, straight, clean-boled, and in condition to make the 

 best of the last part of the period of maximum growth, which 

 a large number of measurements have shown to occur in gen- 

 eral between the ages of seventy and ninety years. A heavy 

 thinning now comes to the assistance of the best specimens 

 of growth, and they are left to profit by it until seven years be- 

 fore the date fixed for their fall. Then begin the regeneration 

 cuttings, whose object is to admit through the leaf-canopy an 

 amount of light, varying with the temperament of each spe- 

 cies, whose mission is to give vitality to the seedlings which 

 the trees, stimulated themselves by their more favorable situ- 

 ation, now begin to produce in considerable quantities. To 

 this end the light which falls from above has a powerful auxil- 

 iary in that which the system of felling each year in a long, 

 narrow strip admits from the side, and so admirable is this 

 double method that the time which elapses between the be- 

 ginning and the end of a regeneration is but half the average for 

 less favored localities. This applies only to the deciduous 

 trees. The time required by the conifers is much longer, and 

 the incomplete regeneration which they furnish is supple- 

 mented by planting in the blanks already mentioned. But for 

 the self-sown seedlings of both classes the amount of light is 

 gradually increased, the trees which sheltered them are at 

 length wholly removed, and the cycle of growth repeats itself. 



The wagon roads which once served for the transportation 

 of the timber thus produced, although admirable in plan and 

 construction and still thoroughly maintained, have been 

 almost wholly superseded by a system of timber slides and 

 narrow gauge railroads, in which gravity is the motive power. 

 The timber, loaded directly on the cars of the light, portable 

 track laid in the forest (see page 383), or, where the surface is 

 broken, hauled to them by tough little Swiss oxen or carried 

 down on hand sleds which are capable of taking enormous 

 loads, is delivered at the head of one of the slides. Thrown 

 in at the top of the V or U-shaped canal of boards or poles, it 

 rushes down the steep incline of the slide with a speed which 

 often shoots the sticks of cord-wood through the air for a dis- 

 tance of one hundred and fifty feet as they rebound from the 

 iron-clad platform at the foot, and not infrequently tears apart 

 great logs in the violence of the fall. Piled once more on the 

 cars, this time of one of the two permanent tracks which fol- 

 low thebottom of the valley at divergent levels, the timber pur- 

 sues more quietly its journey to the mill, whither it arrives in 

 trains of from five to twenty cars under the guidance of a sin- 

 gle brakeman. Such a system of transportation is only possi- 

 ble where considerable amounts of timber are cut on limited 

 areas, but its application to the Sihlwald has resulted in so 

 steady and marked a decrease in the cost of moving the pro- 

 duce of the forest to the mills that its value under similar cir- 

 cumstances may be taken to be proved. 



Nancy, France. Gifford Pitichot. 



