July 31, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



309 



for more than half its length. Each season a man is hired by 

 the association, whose duty it is to patrol the streets and keep 

 them clear of papers and rubbish ; with this same end in view 

 large strong baskets, painted green, have been attached to 

 fences and posts at frequent intervals, and I have found these 

 baskets constantly well filled with things which, but for their 

 presence, would have littered up the roads and walks. But, 

 say the members of the association, its greatest utility has been 

 a moral one, as stimulatmg the individuals who belong to it, 

 and, through their example, all the residents of the Pier to 

 keep their private grounds more carefully and to adorn them 

 with plantations. And certainly the combined results of its 

 various efforts seem strikmgly great to one who now revisits 

 the Pier after an absence of several years. 



Once there was scarcely a tree to be seen except a few Wil- 

 lows. Now very many have been planted, and ihe cottages 

 are draped with Japanese Ivy, Wistaria, Rose-bushes and 

 Honeysuckles, all of which grow luxuriantly in this climate. 

 Japanese Roses are frequently seen, but it is a pleasure to 

 notice that the common Wild looses of the region are likewise 

 profusely used for the decoiation of the summer visitors' 

 houses. Their grass, and that around the hotels also, is now 

 beautifully kept ; and, as a rule, a (aste much more commend- 

 able than that generally revealed in such places has been 

 shown in shunning so-called "ornamental beds," and trusting 

 to trees, vines, climbers and shrubs for the beauty of small 

 grounds. Privet-hedges are seen in numbers; no plant grows 

 so quickly or does so well as Privet in situations of this sort ; 

 and just at this season, when even the most carefully clipped 

 are bursting into profuse blossoming, it certainly supplies as 

 charming a method of fencing villa grounds as could be found. 



But the main thing to be noted in the change that has been 

 so quickly worked in this summer resort is not the individual 

 beauty of this plant or of that, or of these grounds or those, 

 but the general improvement in the aspect of the village as a 

 wdiole, and the fact that it results even more from the neatness 

 newly achieved than from the plantations newly made. It 

 should certainly encourage the formation of similar societies 

 of women in all seashore places where they do not already 



exist, — 



Nan-agansett Pier. ^/. G. Van Renssehicr. 



Recent Publications. 



Forest Management. — I. 



A ]\Ianual of Forestry, by W. Schlich. iii. Forest Man- 

 agement. London : Bradbury, Agrew & Co. 1895. 



The third volume of Dr. Schlich's Manual of Forestry, 

 under the title of Forest Management, deals with the prep- 

 aration of working plans and the gathering of information 

 necessary to that end. The term " forest management,'' 

 in this country at least, has been held to have a somewhat 

 wider meaning than that attributed to it by Dr. Schlich, 

 and has been taken to include the actual administration of 

 forest-lands. In that sense the " management of a forest " 

 is spoken of, or "forest management" is said to be intro- 

 duced upon an area of woodland. While the construction 

 and definition of forest terms in the English language is 

 one of the most pressing needs of forestry at the present 

 time, and while there is undoubtedly a gain in clearness 

 under the new meaning, still it is questionable whether the 

 use of the phrase under discussion has not been so firmly 

 established as to make the change difficult, even at the sug- 

 gestion of so high an authority as Dr. Schlich. 



The reason at the root of the utility of a book like the 

 present, which deals exclusively with the methods in use in 

 countries whose conditions, as has been so often said, 

 differ widely from those which obtain in the United States, 

 is admirably described by Dr. Schlich in his preface. He 

 says : "As I have stated elsewhere, the principles of forest 

 management hold good all the world over. In endeavor- 

 ing to explain these principles it seemed to be right and 

 proper to be guided by the experience gained in those coun- 

 tries which have taken the lead in forestry, namely, Ger- 

 many and France. In these countries systematic forest 

 management became a necessity almost a hundred years 

 ago, so that their methods are now based upon long expe- 

 rience and a rich crop of investigations." 



As a general statement the paragraph just quoted is en- 

 tirely beyond dispute, and in a text-book for English 



students it is unquestionably in its place. But even some 

 of the more rigorous principles of forest management, as 

 they are accepted elsewhere, may need modification when 

 they corne to be applied in the United States. An example 

 occurs further on in the preface, where Dr. Schlich says : 

 "Economic forestry, to be successful, must be conducted 

 on true sylvicultural principles, and the yield must be so 

 regulated, that, approximately, the same quantity of 

 material may be brought into the market every year ; in 

 other words, the principle of a sustained and well-regulated 

 yield must be recognized. Then, and then only, can 

 adequate financial results be expected from forestry." In 

 its application to countries where transportation is less de- 

 veloped and freights are more expensive than in the United 

 States, no exception could well be taken to what Dr. 

 Schlich has said. But vi'ith us, where the utilizable part of 

 the wood standing in the forest is usually a comparatively 

 small per cent, of the whole, and where the market of an 

 owner of woodlands in the Alleghany region may cover 

 all the territory from Boston to New Orleans, the reasons 

 for a sustained annual yield lose much of their importance, 

 and in some cases may almost be said to disappear. The 

 single reason which would remain in many instances, were 

 forest management to be applied, would be the necessity 

 for giving continuous work to a trained nucleus for a forest 

 force. Although Dr. Schlich qualifies his original state- 

 ment when he elaborates it on pages 173-177, in discussing 

 the principles of forest working plans, it still remains true 

 that in many cases, under current economic conditions in 

 the United States, profitable and conservative forest man- 

 agement would not imply anything which could properly 

 be described as a sustained annual yield, and, conse- 

 quently, would fall outside the definition which the author 

 has given it. 



The volume under review is an excellent resume of the 

 present conditions of one department of forestry in Europe. 

 Concise, systematic, simple in statement and comprehen- 

 sive in the sense of wise selection, it takes a place which 

 has hitherto been unoccupied. There is nothing else in 

 the same field in English which deserves rank beside it. 

 The criticisms which may be made upon it are to be di- 

 rected in very great proportion not upon Dr. Schlich's work, 

 but upon the general condition of the science which it sum- 

 marizes. One of these is called to mind by the fact that, on 

 p. 34, Dr. Schlich rates the proportion of bark, which varies 

 with species, age and locality, at from six to twenty per cent, 

 of the total volume of the tree. Yet, in the calculations 

 made for the purpose of determining the amount of wood 

 standing on any piece of land, and in the yield tables 

 which have been prepared to facilitate it, no allowance is 

 usually made for the bark, while differences of two or 

 three per cent, in the result of the methods used are quoted 

 as matters worthy of attention. 



While Dr. Schlich's book is, as I have already said, a 

 summary of the position of one part of the science of 

 forestry in Europe, and more especially in Germany, it is 

 yet written distinctly from the position of one who re- 

 serves the right to criticise things as they are. It is pre- 

 eminently and most successfully a text-book, but it con- 

 tains here and there discussions of inadequate or imperfect 

 instruments and methods such as are more often found in 

 general treatises. Their value in this place will be to 

 induce the student to think for himself. On the other 

 hand, the details of the methods of working are given with 

 a preciseness altogether German, and, indeed, the whole 

 book is as thoroughly German as is Dr. Schlich himself. 



New Vorlt. Gijjord Putckot. 



Notes. 



Some of last season's sweet-potatoes are still offered in this 

 city at $1.00 a peck. 



The area of the land devoted to the cultivation of prunes in 

 Oregon, Washington and Idaho is already some 50,000 acres. 



To exemplify the rapidity with which the Eucalyptus-tree 

 grows in California, a recent writer in the Scientific American 



