May 29, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



261 



flowers here profusely. -The flowers are individually very 

 large, pale rose-colored, and more fragrant than those of the 

 other species. The fruit which hangs from long, slender 

 stems is ornamental, high colored, and very fragrant. Fyrus 

 coronaria is a desirable plant for the garden, both for its 

 flowers and its fruit. ^ 



Mayiitli. /• 



The Forest. 

 A Word for the Jack Pine. 



MR. H. B. AYRES, of Minnesota, who is familiar with 

 forest-conditions and the necessity of forest-preser- 

 vation, sends us, at our request, the following note upon 

 the proper use of the " Jack Pine" {Pinus Banksiana) lands 

 so common in the north-central part of the state : 



" In looking over the region the importance of keeping out 

 fires is very evident. This sandy soil is not adapted to farm- 

 ing. People will be moving out of the country as soon as the 

 timber is gone. It is therefore important to keep a growth of 

 timber on that land which is not fertile enough to command 

 sale to farmers. 



" If fires can be kept from running over the land, timber will 

 continue to grow, and will furnish repeated cuttings of log- 

 timber, piles, ties, cordwood and material for wooden-ware, 

 matches, paper, dyes, acids, tanning, etc. Even the very sandy 

 lands that are cut clean and burned over, and are now worth- 

 less, will, if kept from fire, be seeded during the first year, and 

 in a few years be covered with a dense growth of young Jack 

 Pine, with many Norway and some White Pine scattered 

 through them. 



"I am aware that most Minnesotians would laugh at the 

 idea of encouraging a growth of Jack Pine; but during a mmi- 

 ber of years I have given the subject careful attention, and am 

 now convinced that this little, persistent, mean-looking and 

 despised Jack Pine has duties as important and performs them 

 as faithfully as the much sought White Pine. If there were no 

 Jack Pine, I believe a large area in the state would be practi- 

 cally desert to-day, and in proporfion as fires are permitted to 

 destroy the young growth, the sandy and rocky land will 

 become desert-like. 



"When a tract of Norway Pine timber has been cut clean, 

 and fire kept out, a dense growth of Jack Pine will spring up ' 

 first; then young Norway Pine will be able to start in the shelter 

 thus formed. As the Norway grows more rapidly, the Jack 

 Pine is soon left as an undergrowth, which serves to prevent 

 the growth of limbs on the trunks of the Norway. In about 

 thirty years the Norway Pine will be large enough to do with- 

 out the nursing of the Jack Pine, which may then be cut for 

 cordwood, and the Norway, where too thick to leave for log 

 timber, may be thinned for piles and ties, leaving the reuiain- 

 der a tract of clear timber to be coveted by every lumberman, 

 and a good return for reasonable care to encourage tree- 

 growth on land otherwise worthless and unsalable. 



" I would earnestly recommend that the existing laws con- 

 cerning forest fires be rigidly enforced, and such other meas- 

 ures taken as to keep the poor land in timber, thus holding 

 what population there may be now, and even furnishing em- 

 ployment for a greater." 



Felling Trees by Electricity. — Hitherto machines for felling 

 trees have been driven by steam-power, but this is often 

 inconvenient, especially in thick woods, because the heavv 

 machinery, including a boiler, must be placed near the tree 

 to be cut. These machines, therefore, can only be used on 

 the borders of forests or in open spaces readily reached by 

 good roads. The Lotidon Times, however, reports that electric 

 power has been adopted in the Galician forests. Usually in 

 such machines the trunk is sawn, but in this case it is drilled, 

 with a series of holes close together. When the wood is of a 

 soft nature the drill has a sweeping motion, and cuts into the 

 trunk by means of cutting edges on its sides. The drill is 

 actuated by an electric motor mounted on a carriage, which 

 is comparatively light and which can be brought up close to 

 the tree and fastened to it. The motor is capable of turning 

 around its vertical axis, and the drill is geared to it in such a 

 manner that it can turn through an arc of a circle and make 

 a sweeping cut into the trunk. The first cut made, the drill 

 is advanced a few inches and another section of the wood is 

 removed in the same way, until the trunk is half severed. 

 It is then clamped, to keep the cut from closing, and the oper- 

 ation continued until it would be unsafe to go on. The re- 

 mainder is finished by a hand-saw or an axe. The current is 

 conveyed to the motor by insulated wires brought through the 



forest from a generator placed at some convenient site, which 

 may be at a distance from the scene of operations. The 

 generator may be driven l)y steam or water power and does 

 not need to be transported from place to place. 



Recent Publications. 



The Book of Sun-Dials, compiled by the late Mrs. Alfred 

 Gatty. New and enlarged edition, edited by H. K. F. Gatty and 

 E. Lloyd. Messrs. Bell, London, 1889. 



" whoever loves a garden," it has well been said, " loves a 

 sun-dial," and we need no further apology for introducing this 

 book to our readers. The first edition was published in 1872, 

 and has remained the standard authority on its subject. Now 

 it is republished in a much enlarged shape, the nimiber of 

 dial-mottoes quoted being increased from 377 to 728, and an 

 appendix on the construction of dials being added. 



The earliest form of sun-dial was an isolated colimin or obe- 

 lisk, which served as the "gnomon," and threw its shadow 

 upon the ground. Such an arrangement could not be scien- 

 tilically accurate in its measurements, for, as the book before 

 us explains, "the gnomon that indicates the time of day must 

 slope to the horizontal plane at an angle equal to the latitude of 

 the place, and must also lie due north and south." Despite the 

 astronomical lore of the Chaldaeans their dials were probably 

 of the primitive columnar kind, as we know to have been the 

 case with the one which Aliaz, king of Judea, set up in the 

 eighth century B. C, probably having got the idea for it from 

 Babylonia. Dials more nearly approaching to the modern kind 

 were known in classic Greece and Rome ; but it seems to have 

 been a late day when their function was universally under- 

 stood, for during the first Punic war a dial captured in Sicily 

 was set up in the Roman forum, where, of course, it could not 

 tell the hours with exactness. All through the middle ages 

 the sun-dial was the usual, almost the only, instrument for 

 marking the time, and it was not abandoned even when clocks 

 and watches became cheap and common. Almost every old 

 church once had its dial, and the clock which now appears on 

 so many English churches usually shows the station formerly 

 held by the gnomon and circle. A national English custom — 

 shown in some of the great cathedrals as well as in very many 

 parish churches — was to make the south door, not the one in 

 the west front, the chief place of entrance ; and over this door 

 the dial was usually set upon the wall. In the early days of 

 the Reformation, when so many mortuary crosses were in- 

 jured or defaced as bearing superstitious emblems, it was com- 

 mon to turn them into sun-dials, cutting oft" the top to secure 

 a level space where the gnomon and its brass plate might 

 stand. The finest standing dials in Great Britain seem to date 

 from the period when the classic style of gardening ruled — 

 the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries. The most 

 stately of all is perhaps the one which stands at Glamis Castle 

 (famous through its connection with Macbeth), near Forfar in 

 Scotland, which is an elaborate architectural construction bear- 

 ing no less than eighty dial-faces. Pretty conceits are some- 

 times found in which the service of a true dial is simulated by 

 growing plants. At Wentworth Castle, near Barnsley, for ex- 

 ample, a tall Yew-tree serves as a gnomon, while an encircling 

 plantation of Box is cut into the form of a dial-plate and its fig- 

 ures. In southern countries, where tliere is a more constant 

 sim, dials are still more frequently found than in England, and 

 every traveler will rememlier them as forming, very often, the 

 quaintest and most guggestive feature in an ancient garden. 

 Mrs. Gatty and her editors have covered a wide field in search- 

 ing for the inscriptions which were almost invariably placed 

 upon the sun-dial ; and the large collection of mottoes given 

 in the new edition now before us is both instructive and 

 amusing. Of course brief familiar mottoes such as " Tempus 

 Fugit," " Improve the Time," " Fugit Hora," " Docet Umbra," 

 " Cosi la Vita," "Carpe Diem," Brevis Hominum Vita," "Via 

 Vita," " Vigilate et Orate," Vita Sic Transit" and "Work 

 While it is Day," represent the most conmion class of inscrip- 

 tions, but there are many in various languages which are 

 much longer, and are either quotations from some poet or 

 original exliortations to improve the passing hourand remem- 

 ber the coming of the night wherein no man can work. " You 

 may waste but voLi cannot stop me " is one, and another is 

 " Life is Short, Time is Swift, Much is to be done." From 

 among the longer English verses we select a few, although 

 choice is difficult where so many are interesting, and foreign 

 languages are still richer in epigrammatic examples. 

 "Time's glass and scythe 

 Thy life and death declare ; 

 Spend well thy hours and 

 For thy end prepare." 



