159 



deposited in the tissues, nutritive material of various kinds being found 

 in different regions of the plant. When the constructive process is at 

 rest the action of the ferment is called forth, and the reserve food is 

 made ready for assimilation by a process of digestion, in which the 

 ferments are active factors. Under this view, kolazym may be said to 

 act upon the reserve food stored in the seed. During the resting stage 

 of the seed, it starts the digestion of food for the future plant. In the 

 kola nut, some of the products of this metabolism are the alkaloids caf- 

 feine and theobromine ; similarly a product of the metabolism of meat 

 are the closely related xanthine bodies. We find in the ripened seed 

 glucose, which shows the ferment has been at work. 



FORESTRY. 



Abstract of Dr. J. T. Rothrock's Lecture on Relations of Forests to 

 the Surface of the Country, at the Twenty-third Annual Meeting 

 of the State Board of Agriculture in Trenton, U.S.A. 



We are apt to suppose that the most important relations of the forests 

 to the Commonwealth, to the landowner, and to the general interests 

 of the country, are summed up in the lumber produced. It is, however, 

 quite certain that if all the lumber we or our children could need, were 

 sawed up in proper form and stored away at convenient points, if all the 

 fuel which the forests furnish now or will furnish hereafter, were cut 

 and placed on our backyards, that the least important uses of the forest 

 would have been fulfilled. Climatic conditions, such as are necessary 

 for the protection and maturing of our crops, depend upon trees or their 

 aggregate forests as a living thing. The maintenance of an even flow of 

 water, guarding against freshets on the one hand, and low stages on the 

 other, is closely related to the condition of the high water sheds of a re- 

 gion. On the authority of our best engineers it may be stated that on 

 a timbered area, not less than four-fiths of the water which falls as rain 

 or snow, finds its way to depths beneath the surface, and is, therefore, 

 safe for future use, whereas, on the other hand, of the water which falls 

 on clear ground four-fifths run out of the country. It would have been 

 of vast importance, for example, to the business interests along the up- 

 per Ohio river, if last year the quantity of water flowing in. to that 

 stream could have been doubled in the interests of navigation. It must 

 also be remembered that the severe freshets resulting from treeless high- 

 lands, not only carried the water out of the country, but they score the 

 the channel at one point and fill it up at another to s ich an extent that 

 navigation is rendered more difficult and dangerous It may be re- 

 marked here, that so far as the lumbering interests are concerned, there 

 never will come a time when wood will cease to be used, or to rank as 

 an article of almost prime necessity. It is true that substitutes for 

 timber are constantly being found ; iron has largely taken its place in 

 constructing the frames of heavy buildings, and our modern navy and 

 mercantile marine force is represented almost wholly by iron instead of 

 wooden hulls, but on the other hand, new and large uses are constantly 

 being discovered for wood. Our country does not, to-day, furnish the 

 lumber required by the pulp interests, though they have by no means 



