38 Twenty-sixth Report on the State Museum. 



valuable be secured from the marsh even in its present condition 

 than is now obtained ? It is true, some of the firmer places are used 

 as pasture ground for cattle, some of the finer sorts of sedges and 

 grasses are cut and shipped to the New York market to be used as 

 bedding for horses, and a large supply of flag leaves is annually 

 gathered. But in all these ways an extremely small part of the pro- 

 duce of the marshes is utilized. So very many tons of rank vegeta- 

 tion are annually left to rot on the ground that it seems almost 

 wasteful. I would suggest the propriety of instituting a series of 

 experiments with a view to establish the value of some of the grasses 

 which constitute such a large part of the vegetation of the marsh. 

 Especially promising are the Indian rice, Zizania aquatica^ and the 

 reed-grass, Phragmites communis. These might be found, if cut 

 early, to be equal or even superior in value to corn fodder, and the 

 seeds of the former are almost sure to be a good grain for the fatten- 

 ing of fowls. Having established the value of these grasses, it would 

 seem to be but a trifling matter to increase their quantity to such an 

 extent that they might be harvested with profit. 



The unusual destruction of vegetation in some localities last winter, 

 and especially of hardy evergreens, has been a theme of considerable 

 comment. It is not my purpose to discuss the various theories that 

 have been advanced in explanation of the unusual occurrence, but 

 simply to record a few interesting cases that have fallen undef my 

 own observation. 



In a certain locality, in the town of Sand Lake, there is a group of 

 young pines, some of the trees being red pine, Pinus resinosa, and 

 pome white pine, Pinus strcbus. None of the former were affected, 

 but the latter had many of their branchlets winter-killed, thus indi- 

 cating that the former is a more hardy tree than the latter. 



The hilly region in the eastern part of Rensselaer county has for 

 many years furnished the Albany market with a plentiful supply of 

 wild blackberries, Puhus villosus^ and wild raspberries, Puhus 

 strigosus. Last summer the crop of the former was an entire failure, 

 the briers being winter-killed, but of the latter there was an ordinary 

 yield, thus indicating that the raspberry is more hardy than the black- 

 berry. 



A young white-pine, standing in an opening between two clumps 

 of trees, in such a position as to receive the full force of the strong 

 north- west winds, had many of its branchlets on this exposed side 

 killed, w^hile those on the opposite side of the tree were comparatively 



