March 6, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



117 



duce ; on the whole, it is not unHkely that some similar sub- 

 stances are always active in the seeds of certain plants at a 

 certain period of their germination. The fact that these fer- 

 ments have an important office in the life of certain plants, 

 and that others are found in almost all plants, leads to the 

 question as to the possible use to vegetation of the alkaloids 

 and other powerful nitrogenous principles which are found so 

 widely diffused, and which appear to have no office in diges- 

 tion or nutrition. It is usually said that these have the office 

 of protecting the plant from invasion from unwelcome insects 

 and other animals, and this is doubtless true, but it is not 

 improbable that some of them may share with certain i^esins 

 the power of resisting the attacks of more insidious enemies — 

 namely, destructive fungi. 



We have now passed in very brief review some of the more 

 important substances which the plant forms in its laboratory. 

 Looking at them all from the point we have now gained, we 

 may say that they fall naturally into the following classes : (i) 

 Those which are, or are allied to, the primary product of 

 assimilative or constructive energy, depending on the reception 

 of solar radiance; to this class belong the members of the sugar 

 series ; (2) Derivatives of the former class representing nearly 

 or quite the same amount of stored energy, such as the cell- 

 wall substance ; (3) proteids, having nitrogen as an essential 

 constituent, and forming the source of the living matter of the 

 plant ; (4) waste substances, both of the nitrogenous and the 

 non-nitrogenous series, which are turned to account by the 

 plant in protection, attraction, and so on. 



The green cells of the plant, exposed to the light and air, are 

 the seat of those activities which result in the construction of 

 organic matter. Any other cells of the plant, provided the 

 temperature is sufficient, may serve as the seat of any or all 

 the many activities by which these primary organic products 

 are converted into other matters. In short, to use a familiar 

 expression, the energy of solar radiance winds up this marvel- 

 lous machinery, which in its rapid or its more tardy running 

 down, gives us all the phenomena of plant life. But it is to be 

 remembered that, so long as the sun shines on an active plant 

 which is properly supplied with the raw materials for its work, 

 the machinery is being constantly wound up, and, as one may 

 say, faster than in the economy of the plant, the supply of 

 energy can ever be used. This excess is left for the use of 

 other organisms, or it may accumulate, as in fact it has accu- 

 mulated, in the stores of unused carbon of our living forests, 

 and the forests of the past, our coal of to-day. 

 Cambridge, Mass. George Lincoln Goodale. 



The Forest. 

 The Forests and Woodlands of New Jersey. — IV. 



'X'HE largest Holly trees I have ever seen are at Wild- 

 -^ wood, on Five-mile Beach, which lies along the Atlantic 

 shoi-e above Cape May. Many of them are more than a foot 

 in diameter, with lofty and spreading tops, and in winter when 

 these towering masses of dense evergreen foliage are deco- 

 rated with an almost unimaginable profusion of bright scarlet 

 berries, the effect is indescribably beautiful; and when, as 

 sonaetimes happens here, the trees are wrapped for a few hours 

 in a fleecy, feathery mantle of snow, the forest looks like a 

 picture — a scene from an enchanted land. There is a fine, 

 umbrageous forest here, almost immediately on the beach. 

 It is nearer the ocean, indeed, than any other forest of equal 

 beauty along our coast, so far as I have observed. Besides 

 the Hollies, many of the Oak, Cedar, Sassafras and other trees 

 are also very large. It is pleasant to note that the proprietors 

 of the place have an appreciation of the charm and glory of 

 fine forest trees, and .that they intend to preserve many of 

 them permanently. At Holly Beach there are also very "^fine 

 trees. 



In many of the towns of our coimtry noble trees are often 

 sacrificed to the notion, held by the street officers, that wide, 

 wind-swept expanses of dust, bordered by straight walks from 

 which all trees have been removed, are an indication of supe- 

 rior " enterprise " on the part of the inhabitants, and of ener- 

 getic administration of the supervisor of roads. I have seen 

 trees thus destroyed which had been the source of much 

 greater good to the community about them than had ever been 

 wrought by the man who murdered them. A curious feature 

 or accompaniment of this vandalism, which may be observed 

 almost everywhere, is the mockery of tree-planting along the 

 same streets from which trees of great beauty and" of historic 

 interest, the product of centuries of growth, have been ruth- 

 lessly cut away. When the thoroughfares and roadsides of the 

 town have been completely devastated, the officers proceed to 



set out young trees along the streets. But the planting is 

 usually performed in such fashion as to kill or permanently 

 cripple most of them, and for a generation or two the inhabi- 

 tants will see a miserable array of dwarfed and stunted bushes 

 and spindling saplings where once stood the great trees which 

 were the pride and glory of the village. 



The Great Oak of Salem. — There is a remarkable White 

 Oak at Salem. It stands in the burying-ground of the Society 

 of Friends. I cannot learn that any one knows its age exactly, 

 but it is said to be at least two hundred years old. It is a won- 

 derful tree for its size and symmetry, and for the great number 

 and spread of its branches. It was measured in 1884, and was 

 then eighty feet high ; the trunk was eighteen feet four inches 

 in girth, and the spread of the branches wtis 360 feet in circum- 

 ference. The circle covered by them was 1 14 feet in diameter 

 and its area 10,207 square feet. I am indebted to the courtesy 

 of Mr. H. M. Rumsey for these measurements. 



To see this tree is well worth a summer day's journey from 

 Philadelphia to Salem. Any such tree is a credit to the town 

 in which it stands. Its existence indicates a degree of civiliza- 

 tion, an appreciation of the beauty and majesty of noble trees, 

 wliich is by no means so general in our country as is desira- 

 ble. In too many places such insensibility and vandalism pre- 

 vail that no tree ever has a chance to attain to imposing pro- 

 portions, the beauty of complete development, or the interest 

 which attaches to great age. I am sorry to say that this fine 

 tree has been seriously injured within the last few years by 

 neglect of the wounds made by the removal of several large 

 branches. The large cut surfaces are exposed to the weather 

 and to the attacks of enemies of all kinds, without any protec- 

 tion whatever. They should have been covered at once with 

 a thick coat of coal-tar or paint. While unshielded they invite 

 the enti-ance of the spores of various fungi, or toad-stools, 

 which will ultimately destroy the tree. Their mycelium is a 

 perennial growth, and spreads through the sound wood until 

 the entire tree is inoculated with a fatal disease. It is probable 

 that in a few years this grand tree will begin to show symptoms 

 of decay. 



Large Trees in Cape May County. — There are some very 

 large Oaks and other trees still standing in swamps, or on 

 ground surrounded by swamps, in Cape May County — trees 

 which were doubtless there when white men first visited the 

 country ; but there are, I believe, no considerable tracts of un- 

 broken primeval forest in that region. Mr. Richard S. Learn- 

 ing and Dr. Coleman F. Leaming told me of a White Oak 

 which was nine feet across the stump, and forty feet to the 

 first limb, and this hmb was over two feet in diameter. At 

 this height the tree was more than four feet through, and all 

 below this was sound. A Methodist clergyman counted over 

 Boo rings of growth. The same gentleman told me of a Tulip- 

 tree ten feet in diameter, with a clear trunk forty feet or more 

 in length. Both the Sweet and Sour Gums grow very large in 

 that region. Mr. Richard Leaming is a ship-builder, and has 

 had much experience with different kinds of timber. He says 

 that Cape May County oak and gum timber is more durable 

 than any other with which he is acquainted, except some kinds 

 of wood from certain parts of Virginia. 



The Oaks of May's Landing. — May's Landing, in Atlantic 

 County, is remarkable among the towns of the state, and, in- 

 deed, among the towns of the whole country, for having been 

 built — a large part of it, at least — in a very heavy Oak forest, 

 without destroying the trees. Many of the house-lots or door- 

 yards have never been cleared up. The great umbrageous 

 White Oak trees stand close up to the very door-steps of the 

 dwellings. The court-house and the churches are in the same 

 way embosomed and embowered in a forest of wonderful 

 beauty and interest. This characteristic of the town is so 

 prominent and vital, that a visitor is soon led to inquire regard- 

 ing its origin and the means of its perpetuation. The proprie- 

 tors of the great Colwell forest domain, who formerly owned 

 the land on which the town is built, and who still own much 

 of it, have from the earliest times set the example of preserv- 

 ing and protecting the trees, and when selling lots in the town 

 they have always impressed upon purchasers their desire that 

 this policy should be permanently followed. The streets at 

 some points have been moved to new lines, and turned this 

 way and that, to avoid injury to the trees, and great Oaks three 

 or four feet in diameter stand unharmed in the middle of the 

 sidewalks, while generation after generation of the people of 

 the old town walk reverently around them from youth to old 

 age, till they lie down to sleep at last under the benediction of 

 sheitering boughs and leaf-curtained canopies in the village 

 cemetery. 



Peculiar Holly Trees.— From May's Landing the track of 



