538 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 194. 



another example of an apple that may be almost unsurpassed 

 or may be nearly worthless for the table. The flesh of the 

 best is almost a yellow, and the skin finely tinted but not a 

 bright yellow and red. Apple-trees that bear the best fruit are 

 those that stand in pasture lots, or by the fences, or on our 

 lawns as shade trees. 



Clinton, N. Y. E. P. Powell. 



Correspondence. 

 A Rhode Island Forest. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I have lately paid a visit to the plantations of Mr. Henry 

 G. Russell, of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, and as they 

 represent what is the most important experiment in silvicul- 

 ture that has been made in New England in the last twenty 

 years, some account of the results which Mr. Russell has al- 

 ready obtained may be interesting to the tree-loving readers 

 of Garden and Forest. 



Mr. Russell's plantations stretch in a rather narrow belt for 

 a distance of two or three miles along the north and north-west 

 shores of Greenwich Harbor, a considerable inlet from Narra- 

 gansett Bay. The situation is bleak, exposed, and wind-swept; 

 the soil is naturally light and sandy, and what little plant-food 

 the upper layers ever possessed was long ago exhausted by 

 continuous cultivation, first by the Indians who frequented 

 this point to feast on the clams which line its shores and the 

 fish which still abound in the waters which surround it, and 

 then by their white successors. That the soil, in spite of the 

 poverty of the surface, possesses the power to produce good 

 trees is shown by the great Oaks, both White and Black, which 

 are scattered over some parts of Mr. Russell's estate, and by 

 the remarkable growth made by some of the trees in his plan- 

 tations. The first of these was made in 1878, Mr. Russell hav- 

 ing determined to protect his fields by a belt of timber on the 

 shore side. The work has been carried on gradually, the ex- 

 perience gained in one year being used to the advantage of 

 the plantations made the following year. Nearly one hundred 

 and fifty acres in all have now been planted, and the whole 

 coast-line of the estate is lined with trees. 



Mr. Russell, like most American planters, made his first at- 

 tempts with foreign trees, of course with Scotch and Austrian 

 Pines and Norway Spruces. Their worthlessness is already 

 demonstrated, although the largest of the Pines, which are 

 fast dying or blowing over, supply the farm with about all the 

 firewood it consumes. It is interesting to note that large num- 

 bers of self-grown seedling Scotch Pines have been springing 

 up in the plantations during the last three or four years 

 from seed scattered from trees now only thirteen years 

 planted. 



The European Larch has done better than the other exotic 

 conifers, and has proved one of the best trees planted at East 

 Greenwich. The growth the Larch has made on this sterile 

 soil is remarkable-. The writer of this letter was in East Green- 

 wich during the summer of 1878 and pulled up one of the 

 newly planted Larches and wore it in his buttonhole during 

 the day, much to the amusement of some of Mr. Russell's 

 neighbors, who were inclined to look upon his efforts at forest- 

 making with that incredulity with which country-bred New 

 Englanders are apt to regard every innovation in old-time cus- 

 toms. The companions of my boutonni^re of thirteen years 

 ago are now stout trees from twenty-five to thirty feet in height, 

 with trunks each thick enough to make two good fence-posts, 

 and the neighbors are not laughing at Mr. Russell as a tree- 

 planter as much as they were, but are themselves planting 

 trees. In 1879 Mr. Russell wanted to try planting the Larch in 

 autumn, and sent to Robert Douglas & Sons, of Waukegan, 

 for one of their dollar packages containing a hundred trees. 

 The package was six or seven inches long and perhaps three 

 inches in diameter ; the trees were set on an exposed point, 

 and now they vary from twenty to twenty-seven feet in height. 

 The Larch and the White Pine supply seven-eighths of the 

 material used by Mr. Russell in his plantations. The Larch 

 has grown rather the taller of the two, but the Pines have 

 formed stouter trunks and have probably made more wood, and 

 some of the youngest plantations are composed of White Pines 

 exclusively. They grow with great vigor even in the most ex- 

 posed situations, but have suffered from the attacks of the 

 Pine louse, and from the Pine weevil which has destroyed 

 the leaders on thousands of trees. Whale-oil soap applied 

 with a syringe has checked, although it has not exterminated 

 the louse. The weevil is a more serious enemy, as its pres- 

 ence is not noticed until the damage is done. The tops of all 



young trees injured by it are now systematically cut off and at 

 once burned, so that its ravages are likely to decrease. The 

 Douglas Spruce, raised from seed gathered in Colorado, has 

 also proved an exceedingly hardy and valuable tree at East 

 Greenwich, growing almost as rapidly as the White Pine 

 and developing as yet no disease or insect enemy. 



Various methods of planting have been tried, it being Mr. 

 Russell's intention to make his place valuable as an object- 

 lesson to the public. Plantings of pure Larch and of pure 

 White Pine have been made and the two trees have been 

 mixed together in different proportions. One of the most 

 promising of the mixed plantations is composed of Larch set 

 four feet apart each way with a White Pine in place of the 

 fourth Larch, so that the Pines stand sixteen feet apart each 

 way. As these have grown the Larches nearest them have 

 been gradually cut away, with the intention of leaving the 

 Pines to occupy eventually the ground. 



Two sand-holes, each several acres in extent, near the end 

 of the point, and therefore in an exposed situation, had for 

 years been gradually spreading, and threatened to extend over 

 a large area. It was a difficult and tedious undertaking to 

 cover and fix the surface and so prevent the sand from work- 

 ing inland. This has at last been accomplished by covering 

 the surface with brush and then by planting it thickly with 

 seedling Pines, the Ailanthus, and other trees. 



Mr. Russell has found that the best method of planting is to 

 run shallow furrows four feet apart, each way, and then to 

 set three or four-year-old transplanted seedlings at the inter- 

 sections of the furrows. The land is so poor that weeds do 

 not grow vigorously enough to interfere with the young trees, 

 and they do not require or receive any care or cultivation after 

 planting. For many years Mr. Russell has been planting 

 acorns, principally of the White Oak, among his conifers with 

 a view of securing a succession of forest-growth in case the 

 original trees should be destroyed by fire orbther causes. The 

 experiment has been successful, as thousands of young Oaks 

 now bear witness. Some of these, where light has been 

 allowed to reach them by thinning surrounding trees, are five 

 or six feet high and are growing rapidly and vigorously. 

 Acorns were put in with a cane at a trifling expenditure of 

 labor and money, and among the trees which have sprung 

 from them are some which may be expected to flourish for 

 the matter of a century or two after the last of the coni- 

 fers which now surround- and overtop them has disap- 

 peared. 



The transformation which the plantations have made in the 

 short period of thirteen years is astonishing. Standing now 

 north of the mansion house and looking in the direction of 

 the town of East Greenwich what appears to be an endless for- 

 est of waving Pines backed by high hills covered with the 

 slender spires of countless Larches meets the view in place of 

 the ugly, straggling wooden town with its squalid water-front. 

 It is not easy to imagine a greater change or to realize how 

 short has been the time since these trees came into life. At 

 the beginning of the undertaking the plants were brought 

 from the Douglas nursery on the shores of Lake Erie, but of 

 late years Mr. Russell has established home nurseries in which 

 his material is raised, so that the visitor can see here all the 

 operations of tree-planting — beds filled with seedlings, the 

 plantations made last spring (some twenty-five acres) and 

 those of each previous year, and note the condition and rate 

 of growth of the different trees. 



Mr. Russell set out to do two things : by planting, to 

 protect his estate from cold winds which were gradually blow- 

 ing it away ; and to show the possibility of making trees grow 

 under what appeared singularly trying and difficult conditions. 

 He has been more than successful in both. The attractive- 

 ness and value of his farm is greatly increased by his planting, 

 and he has reared a forest which is more interesting and sug- 

 gestive than anything of the sort east of the Missouri River. 

 Its value as an object-lesson cannot be overestimated, and 

 Henry G. Russell must stand as one of the foremost educators 

 in rural economy that America has produced. But in doing 

 this he has done something for himself which he, perhaps, 

 never dreamed of twenty years ago — he has created in him- 

 self a real and living interest which will last as long as he lives. 

 Among his trees he finds occupation of which he never tires ; 

 his greatest pleasure, he tells his visitors, is to go out and "get 

 lost in his woods"; to pass long days among them, studying 

 the trees, marking those which are to be cut, pruning his 

 young Oaks, planning for new plantations, and finding that 

 communion with Nature which is the greatest blessing that 

 can come to any man however great may be his attainments 

 or splendid his possessions. 



Providence. R. I. JJaVlS. 



