FORESTRY. 



39i 



THE FOREST NURSERY. 



Natural regeneration of trees by seeds is 

 a slow and uncertain process. The floor 

 of a forest, even of the densest and darkest 

 one, is. a well occupied place. Of the 

 thousands of seeds, therefore, which a 

 healthy tree matures and sheds, compara- 

 tively few ever sprout, and fewer still ever 

 reach a stage when they are able to cope 

 with their competitors for root space and 

 light. It is, then, an important duty of 

 the forester to help those seedlings which 

 are valuable to him, in the struggle for ex- 

 istence, by providing a suitable place where 

 tne seed may sprout and t^e seedlings have 

 the right conditions for developing. A 

 place where trees are reared from seed is 

 known as a nursery. 



The largest nurseries in New York State 

 growing purely timber trees are the 2 be- 

 longing to the New York State College of 

 Forestry, at Axton and Foresters, N. Y. 

 They are about 5 miles apart, and together 

 produce 2,000,000 young trees, mostly coni- 

 fers, white pine, Norway spruce, Scotch 

 pine, Douglas fir, etc. Each covers an area 

 of about 2 acres, laid out in small beds. In 

 these beds, whose soil has been cultivated, 

 the seeds are planted in regular rows, 6 

 inches apart To protect the tender plants 

 from the intense light and heat of the 

 sun, as well as to retard evaporation, every 

 bed is protected by a lath screen. It is 

 here that the future pine and spruce forests 

 have their origin, the seedlings, when 2 or 

 3 years old, being planted out on the cut 

 areas and on the burns and slashes. By 

 the end of the first summer, if proper care 

 is taken, and the beds are kept clear of 

 weeds, the trees have grown about an inch 

 in height, with a root system of about an 

 inch and a half. At the end of 3 years 

 they may attain a height of over half a 

 foot, when they are ready to be set out. 



Occasionally the small trees are trans- 

 planted from one bed into another before 

 leaving the nursery. The chief purpose of 

 this operation is to give the seedlings, 

 which are crowded in the original bed, 

 room to expand their root system. More 

 often, however, this transplanting process 

 is omitted; and when 2 or 3 years old the 

 trees are carefully taken out, wrapped in 

 sphagnum moss, and shipped to the places 

 where they are finally to be planted. Ex- 

 treme care must be taken to leave the root 

 system intact during the transportation. If 

 handled properly, between 80 and 100 per 

 cent, of the trees transplanted will take 

 root in the new soil and thrive. More 

 than one million trees have been set out 

 from these nurseries in the last 3 years, 

 and nearly 1,000 acres of waste land have 

 in this way been redeemed to useful pro- 

 duction at a cost varying from $5 to $10 

 an acre. 



WHAT WOODS NOURISH ANIMALS. 



In the light of the knowledge that the 

 wood of coniferous trees may at certain 

 times and seasons contain considerable 

 quantities of mannan, which is an approved 

 food for ruminating animals, there would 

 seem to be need of studying anew an old 

 and somewhat disputed, not to say despised 

 question, as to whether or not sawdust 

 may have any value as a cattle food when 

 used instead of straw as an ingredient of 

 rations for maintaining idle animals. Re- 

 ports have several times been made by 

 German farmers who claimed to have ob- 

 tained useful, practical results on feeding 

 sawdust to neat cattle; while Professor F. 

 Lehmann's digestion experiments with 

 sheep went to show that sawdust is prac- 

 tically indigestible and useless as food for 

 these animals. It would be interesting to 

 know what kinds of woods were adminis- 

 tered to the animals in all these cases and 

 at what time in tne year the trees had 

 been cut. 



Kellner found that oxen fed with 2 kilo- 

 grams a head of fine spruce sawdust mixed 

 with 0.4 kilograms of molasses and 7 kilo- 

 grams of cut hay ate the fodder freely, and 

 digested 9.4 per cent of the carbohydrates 

 of the sawdust, and 8.4 per cent of its cel- 

 lulose, or, together, 17.7 per cent ; against 

 12.90 per cent of the carbohydrates and 

 23.1 per cent, of the cellulose (together 36 

 per cent) in the straw of winter grain, 

 when such straw was fed to the animals 

 instead of sawdust. He argues that, in 

 times of dearth, fine, fresh spruce sawdust 

 may well be used to replace straw in the 

 rations of idle oxen, and that, when prop- 

 erly balanced by appropriate nitrogenous 

 food, it may be regarded as possessing 

 about one-half the nutritive value of straw 

 for maintaining oxen. — Storer, in Bulletin, 

 Bussey Institute. 



I became a subscriber to your magazine 

 last March. Since then I have received it 

 regularly. Recreation is the best sports- 

 man's magazine published; full of news 

 and excellent stories. The absence of fic- 

 tion in most of the stories is a prominent 

 feature. They are manifestly accounts of 

 actual experience. Those who desire a 

 change from the desk or the shop should 

 read Recreation and they will return to 

 their work refreshed bv the spice and orig- 

 inality of the stories it contains. 



Arthur E. Palmer, Schenectady, N. Y. 



No lover of sunshine and outdoor sports 

 and life, can pass Recreation. Confined 

 to my office most of the time, its pages 

 are a vacation to me. 



J. G. Wheat, Louisville, Ky. 



