214 



Garden and Forest. 



[May I, li 



made to destroy such f uns^i by subjecting the dry seeds to high 

 temperatures, and to the action of strong solutions of poisons. 

 Among the many Hquids whicli liave been employed with par- 

 tial success in a few cases may be mentioned solutions of blue 

 N'itriol or sulphate of copper. 

 Cambridge. Mass. George Lincoln Goodale. 



Correspondence. 



Our Forestr}^ Exhibit at Paris. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — Some account of the Forestry Exhibit lately sent to 

 the Paris Exposition by the Forestry Division of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture may be of interest to your readers. 



It is the first ever prepared in this country for such a pur- 

 pose, in so far as it is confined to forestry as an art, and leaves 

 out the display of manufactures which depend on forest-pro- 

 ducts. The main object in view in preparing this exhibit has 

 been to be instructive to European students of American for- 

 est-conditions, forest-growth, forest-products and forest-utili- 

 zation, and many novel features in the method of arrangement 

 of the exhibit have been introduced to" attain this object. 



To give an idea of the forest-areas still existing a large wall- 

 map, twelve by seventeen feet, has been prepared, showing for 

 each state the ratio of forest-land to total area by different 

 shades of green color. This is all the knowledge we can 

 really claim to have in regard to our forest area, since the 

 statistics gathered by the census are no longer true, and a 

 stamp in the shape of a tree has been used to indicate on the 

 map the localities of densest growth. 



Great care has been bestowed on the forest botanical ex- 

 hibit. Out of the 420 or 430 arborescent species forming our 

 forest-wealth, 120 species have been selected which appear to 

 form more or less the important staples of our timber supply, 

 or which for some special reason seem desirable objects for 

 our future forestry. The wood specimens are about nine 

 inches in height and two inches in breadth, representing a cut 

 from centre to periphery of varying width, with a slanting cut 

 at the top of centre, and showing the bark, the upper third 

 oiled and varnished, the lower dressed in the raw. The woods 

 that belong to the same genus, or to several genera closely 

 connected, are mounted together on one panel, and the panel 

 is surrounded by glass-covered boxes containing specimens of 

 branch and fruit of the species contained in the group. By 

 the side of each block of wood is a label showing the botanical 

 name of the species with English and French equivalent, a 

 small map showing its field of distribution, and below it the 

 description of the tree and its wood as given in Professor 

 Sargent's account of the Jessup collection of woods. 



There are thirteen such groups or panels. The Pines are 

 represented by twenty-two species — fifty-four northern, six 

 southern, eleven Rocky Mountain and Pacific species. The 

 other conifers fill two panels widi twenty-four numbers. The 

 ten most important Oaks fill another panel, and Hickory, with 

 Walnut, Chestnut, Beach and Hornbeam, another. 



Tlie Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, 

 which is the trustee of a fund bequeathed by the younger 

 Michaux, a French botanist, for the purpose of encouraging 

 the study of trees in the United States, placed one hundred 

 dollars at the disposal of Mr. Fernow for the purpose of ac- 

 knowledging by an exhibit their recognition of the generosity 

 of this man. A most fitting exhibit seemed to be the work of 

 this botanist in 240 colored plates illustrating the American 

 forest-flora, grouped twelve in a swinging frame, headed by 

 a steel engraving of Michaux and a French inscription relating 

 the circumstance of the appearance of this exhibit. 



Professor Rothrock, lecturer under the Michaux fund, of 

 wliich one-half was contributed by the American Philosophical 

 Society, obtained permission to loan for photographic enlarge- 

 ment, some of the many fine lantern slides of characteristic 

 tree-growth which he has collected. These were supplemented 

 by photographs from Mr. Henry Brooks, of Boston, and from 

 other sources. Especially noteworthy are the contributions 

 of Mr. Taber, of San Francisco. His California trees, on 

 plates fourteen by twenty inches, are magnificent representa- 

 tions. Altogether some fifty characteristic photographs are 

 in this collection. 



A frame of veneer sections shows the gross anatomy of 

 some of our important woods, and a series of magnificent 

 photo-micrographs in swingingframes, executed by Mr. Thomas 

 W. Smillie, photographer of tfie National Museum, from sec- 

 tions of Mr. Z. L. Zabriskie, illustrates the anatomical structure 

 of twenty species enlarged 100 times in radial, tangential and 



transverse section. This is a kind of exhibit probably never 

 before presented to the public, and highly interesting. 



The sub-section of Forest-culture contains first, a collection 

 of tree seeds of 100 species in glass bottles. These will con- 

 vey to the European forester, who is accustomed to handle 

 not more than twenty species, an idea of the variety and also 

 the difirculty in the selection, proper identification and hand- 

 ling of our wealth of valuable trees and their products. 



The second number is the model of a tree-planfing machine 

 invented by Thomas A. Stratton and lately patented, although 

 it has been tested for two years in western Nebraska. The 

 machine is drawn by five horses, or by a locomotive, and is 

 capable, in one motion, of plowing the ground and planting 

 from 20,000 to 30,000 seedlings in a day. One man to drive 

 and one man to feed have set 15,272 Ash seedlings in nine 

 hours. 



The third number represents a collection of sections of fifty 

 trees, planted and grown in different localities of the country, 

 five sections from each tree — a small forest reduced to ship- 

 ping dimensions. The sections came from the Arnold Arbor- 

 etum, of Massachusetts, the Agricultural Colleges of Michigan 

 and Illinois and the well-known Farlington Plantation, in Kan- 

 sas. The sections were taken from the base and every three 

 feet of each tree up to twelve feet, and mounted in frames, so 

 that the five sections in the frame represent a twelve-foot pole, 

 showing on their face the rate of growth in the different parts 

 of the tree. The annual rings are marked with the year of 

 their growth, and a centimeter measure is pasted across the 

 face of each section for ready reference. The amount of in- 

 formation which may be readily read from these living books 

 on tree-growth is remarkable, and would fill many pages. 



In the section of Forest-utilization attention is first claimed 

 by the huge slab of Redwood, framed in a frame seven by 

 twelve feet. A series of photographic views, in a Redwood 

 frame, shows the different stages in lumbering these giant 

 trees. A collection of the tools used in lumbering, arranged 

 as a frame surrounding photographic methods of lumbering 

 as practiced in the northwest and in the south, will give to the 

 Europeans an idea of the art of lumbering, which is truly and 

 specifically an American development. The model of a lumber- 

 ing sleigh, and of a steam logger, which makes its own ice- 

 road, getting into every corner of the woods, completes this 

 phase of our working of the forest. 



Numerous large-sized slabs of our economically important 

 woods show the resifit of the lumbering; especially a fine 

 plank of the White Pine, a monster plank of Cypress, a slab of 

 the Tulip Poplar six feet wide. Black Walnut, Birch, Cherry, 

 Oak, and panels of curled woods of the southern Pines, 

 Maples, etc., give some idea of our wood material. 



It is unfortunate that Mr. Fernow had so little time and such 

 a scanty supply of money at his disposal. But when it is con- 

 sidered that the collection had to be made in four months and 

 for $600, and that it is to be displayed in the limited space of 

 sixteen by twenty-two feet, it will be admitted that the collec- 

 tion is remarkably well fitted for to give instruction to the 

 European forester. 

 New York. E. T. Lander. 



The Home of Shortia. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — I lately made a collecting trip to the region of Shortia, 

 and found the route from Highlands, North Carolina, an inter- 

 esting one. It passes through quite extensive thickets of 

 Rhododendroti Vaseyi, easily distinguished, even at this early 

 season (March 25th) by their very large flower-buds, with 

 black-tipped scales. A fine group of Carolina Hemlocks was 

 also passed. We camped the first night at the White Water 

 Falls, which alone are worth a considerable journey to see. 

 The Jocassee Valley, our destination, is at the mouth of White 

 Water Creek, or rather at the juncfion of White Water and 

 Devil Fork. I wished to see if Shortia was growing as high 

 up in the mountains as these Falls, which are at least 1,000 feet 

 above Jocassee. No Shortia was found, however, until we 

 reached the valley, which has an altitude of about 1,200 

 feet, and here it grows by the acre. Every little brooklet is 

 lined with it. Most of these little water-courses are in deep, 

 narrow gorges, where the sun hardly penetrates, except during 

 the middle of the day. All of these steep banks are literally 

 covered with Shortia. What is comforting to the botanist is, 

 that it can hardly be exterminated. It is on land too steep to 

 be cultivated, and there in such abundance that no amount of 

 collecting can ever affect it very seriously. Our party took 

 away bushels of it, and no one could tell that a plant had been 

 disturbed, so thickly is it growing. No idea of the beauty of 



