278 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 173. 



ment against the assertions that are made by prudent men 

 concerning the gradual destruction of the timber of the 

 country. 



If the trees on these scattered woodlands were allowed 

 to grow up again the work of these portable mills would 

 not be so much of a calamity, but, too often, when farmers 

 find their trees cut away they endeavor to break up the 

 land and add to the area of their cultivated fields. As a rule, 

 too much land is already under the plow, and this new clear- 

 ing simply means a few more acres of poorly tilled land 

 and no increase of income. That is, the farm would gen- 

 erally yield a larger income if the wood had been allowed 

 to stand, and if the labor and money put in the new ground 

 had been expended upon that already under tillage. In- 

 deed, in a great many instances it would be profitable for 

 the farmers of the country to allow the broken, or sterile, 

 or stony portions of their land to grow up in timber, and 

 give more thorough culitvation to what remains. Where 

 these mills have been operated for any considerable time 

 one can see that the country loses much of its beauty, 

 which is a more important matter than it seems, for a well- 

 wooded country has attractions for city visitors and city 

 buyers which enhance the value of real estate to an appre- 

 ciable degree. But, besides this, it may be questioned 

 whether the opening of the country to the sweep of the 

 cold winds in winter, and drying winds in summer, does 

 not have an appreciable effect on the general fertility of 

 any region. 



But, after all, these voracious little mills are only one other 

 device used by this generation in its haste to get rid of its 

 inherited forests. There is little reason to hope that any 

 salable tree will be allowed to stand. The promise of 

 future forests in the country seems to rest with the children, 

 and depends upon their proper education. Who is to 

 write the school-book which shall inspire our future 

 citizens with an adequate appreciation of the value of 

 forests as a natural resource, and of their functions in relation 

 to soil and climate and health ? Not the least of the benefits 

 of early instruction of this sort would be its help toward 

 establishing a personal friendliness for trees and to- 

 ward the creation of a public sentiment which will protect 

 them from wanton destruction at least. 



Mr. John Robinson has begun, in the Salem Gazette, the pub- 

 lication of a series of articles on " Our Trees." From the first 

 of these papers it appears that there are about 125 different 

 trees growing naturally or cultivated in and about Salem. Of 

 these sixty-four are natives of eastern Massachusetts and sev- 

 enteen come from the other parts of the United States. Salem 

 is, therefore, a very good centre from which to study trees, and 

 Mr. Robinson's papers cannot fail to stimulate much interest 

 in the subject. In the introductory article Mr. Robinson calls 

 attention to the fact, which has often been insisted on in 

 these columns, that people who are familiar with humbler 

 plants, and this applies, too, to learned botanists, have a very 

 slight acquaintance with trees. " Nearly every one," he re- 

 marks, " can tell an Elm from an Oak or a Willow from a Pine, 

 but the difficulty seems to be in telling the Oaks and Pines 

 apart, to distinguish the Pines from the Spruces or the Birches 

 from the Hornbeams, or separate the many foreign trees in 

 cultivation from the native species." "And a little observa- 

 tion," he tells us, " will serve to fix nearly all of these trees in 

 mind and add much pleasure to town walks and country ram- 

 bles. When a good example of some tree is found it should 

 be carefully watched from the earliest warming up of its 

 blood, so to speak, by the spring sun through all its various 

 phases of bursting buds, flowers and fruit, and falling of its 

 leaves. Methods in observation are thus acquired which can 

 be applied to other things in life. By this out-of-door study 

 much more satisfactory results will be obtained than by merely 

 trusting to match flowers or fruit to description and figures. 

 Although books are valuable aids, Nature never will confine 

 herself to plates, which must be typical rather than universal 

 in their scope." 



A sunset, a forest, a snow-storm, a certain river-view, are ' 

 more to me than many friends, and do ordinarily divide my 

 day with my books. — Emerson. 



Winter Studies of the Pine Barren Flora of Lake 

 Michigan. — V. 



H^HE greater part of the woody growth found in a Pine Bar- 

 x ren will naturally be sought among the evergreens. 

 Five kinds of these are present, making, with the Larch, six 

 species of conifers. These are closely associated with decid- 

 uous trees, or have been supplanted by them, for many of 

 the Pines and Cedars have been destroyed by fire, and Oaks 

 and Poplars have taken their place. But when protected a 

 new growth of Pine is made, the White Pine or the Gray Pine, 

 according to locality and conditions of the soil. Protection is 

 difficult in a region traversed by several railroads, and must 

 be restricted to quite limited areas. Hence, some of the 

 problems of forestry may be advantageously studied in a sec- 

 tion of country no larger than the one which embraces the 

 wild lands at the head of Lake Michigan, where the trees have 

 to struggle with the carelessness and wastefulness of men. 

 Groves of White Pine are sometimes seen where the ground 

 is well stocked with thrifty trees of recent growth, from ten to 

 thirty feet high. They have sprung up in the track of fires 

 and maintained their place, and, if not interfered with, would 

 in time form trunks of fair dimensions. The natural condi- 

 tions are present for a Pine-forest from two to four miles wide, 

 extending from the boundary of Indiana, eastward, into the 

 state of Michigan. Most of this is now waste land, of little use 

 for any produce that may be obtained from it. Once there 

 were saw-mills in the tract cutting up Pines and Whitewood 

 (Liriodendron), found in paying quantities. 



Taking the coniferae according to their abundance, the list 

 is headed by Pinns Banksiana, the Gray Pine, or Jack Pine, as 

 it is generally called at the west. It is limited to the close 

 vicinity of the lake, a strip of land from half a mile to two miles 

 wide embracing about all of it. An essentially pure wood of 

 this species is found only on a narrow strip along the shore, 

 where scarcely any trees except a few Red and White Cedars 

 are mixed with it. The succession of woody plants is about 

 as follows : Next to the beach is a fringe of Necklace Poplars 

 {Populus monilifera), mostly stunted trees, often bearing fruit 

 when only eight or ten feet high. Interspersed with these are 

 Willows and Rose-bushes, Cornels, Grape-vines and the Sand 

 Cherry {Prunus pumila). Then the Gray Pine comes in, dwarfed, 

 and often shrub-like where much exposed, but forming trees 

 with trunks six inches to a foot and a half through when 

 away from the shore. Though it is usually a homely tree 

 when standing alone, groves of it, where the ground is free 

 from underbrush and covered with an abundance of fallen 

 leaves or with a sparse herbaceous vegetation, possess attrac- 

 tive features. 



Flattish reaches of this Pine convert the nearly barren 

 sands into clean shady woods, almost equaling woods of Red 

 Pine. They do not have the straight columnar trunk of 

 this tree, covered with smooth reddish bark, the limbs high 

 up and forming a close canopy, with thin, long and slender 

 needles in brush-like tufts, but a short trunk with dark-col- 

 ored, rough and flaky bark, the limbs low down and the 

 branchlets studded on all sides with short, stiff, yellowish 

 green leaves. They are most shapely when somewhat 

 crowded, being spire-shaped when young and small, and 

 when well grown making a roundish crown with their spread- 

 ing limbs. As a shade-tree along a sandy road, they do well 

 and may be quite shapely. Dr. Richardson considered Bank's 

 Pine a handsome tree when growing in favorable situations.* 

 Isolated upon the sand-hills, where it is buffeted by the 

 winds, it may be only a straggling shrub or scraggy tree, 

 standing firm till the sand is swept from off its roots and it is 

 undermined and toppled over. Even in such localities it is 

 frequently a picturesque object, winning respect for its sturdi- 

 ness, though not admiration for its shape. 



The Gray Pine in this section varies in height from a shrub, 

 fruiting when but two or three feet above the ground, to a tree 

 sixty feet high. Trees thirty or forty feet high are common in 

 the denser woods away from the shore of the lake. I have 

 measured some that had a girth of sixty inches, and those with 

 a diameter of ten to twelve inches are frequent. The trunk 

 varies but little in size up to the first branches when these are 

 low, and scarcely any portion of the roots is visible above the 

 surface of the ground, from which the tree rises like a post. It 

 may be found producing cones when but half an inch in diame- 

 ter at the ground and four feet high, bearing a few short branches 

 at the top. But the trees are usually much more stocky than 

 this when fruiting. 



The crown of this tree is generally disfigured by the dark- 



* Gordon, "The Pinetum," p. 231. 



