1876.] 
59 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
upon the shoulders, and the top of the neck, and 
these troubles all result from badly fitting collars. 
When a new collar is needed, it should be made to 
order, if possible, and the horse measured for it. 
Every farmer should insist upon this, and every 
harness-maker should advise it. For accurate mea¬ 
suring of the shoulders and neck, the frame shown 
in the accompanying engraving may be used. It 
consists of a square, shaped like an ordinary car¬ 
penter’s square, made of wood, with a sliding arm 
at the top, and several other sliding arms, fitting 
in the post of the square, which arms may be fast¬ 
ened in their places by set-screws. In measuring 
the horse, the frame is placed on the neck, where 
the collar should rest, and the upper sliding arm is 
made to touch the top of the neck, the fixed arm at 
the bottom resting in its proper position under the 
throat. The other sliding arms are then pushed 
forward, until they touch the neck, and are then 
held in place by tightening the set-screws. The 
frame may be laid upon a sheet of paper, and the 
form of the inside of the collar marked out, giving 
an exact mold of what the collar ought to be, as 
shown by the dotted lines in the engraving. This 
easily constructed apparatus will enable the maker 
to fit the collar exactly to the side of the neck, 
and to allow for every irregularity of shape. 
Forest-tree Planting. 
FIRST ARTICLE. 
Much has been written upon the rapid disappear¬ 
ance of our forests, and the great waste of timber. 
Statistics have been presented to show that if the 
present consumption of timber of all kinds contin¬ 
ues at its present rate, the coming generations will 
suffer from its scarcity, and farmers and land own¬ 
ers are urged to plant trees, if not for their own 
good, at least for that of their descendants. It has 
been argued that the rain-fall is essentially modified 
by the removal of forests, and though this is con¬ 
troverted, those who hold to this view, beg the 
present generation to plant forests, and thus pre¬ 
vent a large portion of the country from becom¬ 
ing a treeless desert, and preveut the now copious 
rivers from becoming mere rivulets, if they do not 
dry up altogether, in the summer, while they from 
the too rapid melting of the snows, become danger¬ 
ous from sudden freshets in spring. We are told 
that trees absorb the dangerous carbonic acid from 
the atmosphere, and give off healthful oxygen, and 
that we must have trees if the sanitary condition of 
the country is to be maintained in the future. 
There are numerous elaborate essays, addresses, 
reports, and even books, urging these and other 
similar reasons why we should plant forest trees. 
All these are interesting, even if some views of the 
writers are not accepted, but we doubt if any or all 
of them will lead, at least in this country, to the 
planting of a single acre in forest. We say “in 
this country,” because our land is generally held 
in small,parcels, and by men who are all too busy 
in trying to meet the pressing immediate needs, to 
give much thought or labor to the welfare of future 
generations. While our farmers are in their way 
eminently patriotic, their patriotism does not run 
in the line of eA^anding much money and work 
that they may leave their country with as genial a 
climate, as large a rainfall, as deep rivers, or with 
as proper an atmosphere as they found it. When 
these reasons why they should plant forests are 
presented to intelligent farmers, they will assent 
to them, but will do no more. There is a great deal 
of “ human nature ” among farmers as well as other 
people, and unless it can be shown that tree plant¬ 
ing will be of use to them, and profitable to them 
in the near future, they will not undertake it. It 
needs no argument to convince the farmer that 
trees are desirable, and he does not need to be told 
that timber in all shapes, and fuel also are of great 
value, whether to use on his farm, or to turn into 
cash. He knows that his family, and also his 
stock, would be more comfortable were his house 
and bams protected from the sweep of cold winds, 
and that even his crops would be helped if the 
force of these were broken. He will even admit, 
that were he to buy the plaoe upon which he now 
lives, he would pay much more for it were it well 
stocked with trees, than as it is now, without them, 
and yet he does not plant. There are sufficient 
reasons for this neglect of tree planting, a neglect 
to which there are many striking exceptions, but 
it will need the efforts of the various agricultural 
societies, all the state bounties, and the persistent 
advocacy of the agricultural journals for many 
years before tree planting will be regarded in the 
only light in which it will become general, that is— 
as a profitable and sure investment, and one which 
will pay as well as any other farm crop. The farmer 
must be convinced that, though the returns are not 
immediate, they are not so far in the future as is 
generally supposed. This is perhaps what deters 
persons from tree planting more than any other one 
thing—the idea that they must wait for half a life¬ 
time to receive any benefit from the work—at least 
any pecuniary benefit. If it can be shown, upon 
good authority, that it does not take so very long 
for a plantation to begin to make returns, and that 
those in middle life may reasonably hope to enjoy 
them, and the young men can be well assured that 
their acres in forest are making a provision for 
after life, the value of which is annually increasing, 
no other inducements will be required to make tree 
planting as general as it is now neglected. In speak¬ 
ing of neglect, we do not mean to convey the idea 
that no planting is done ; taken in the aggregate, 
area that has been set in forests during the past 10 
years, would seem very wide, but compared with 
that which might have been planted with profit, it 
is exceedingly small. It is in the prairie regions, 
where the absence of trees is so marked, and where 
their want is most distinctly felt, that most of the 
plauting has been done, and it is a common im¬ 
pression that it is only in such localities that forest 
plauting is desirablG or profitable. This is a great 
mistake, for the older states present quite as 
strong inducements to plant trees as the newer 
ones ; this is eminently the case in New England, 
where there are so many rocky hills and pastures, 
and so many fields that are fit for no other crop 
than trees, and where the markets are close at 
hand. Our correspondence shows that many 
would gladly plant trees did they know how to go 
to work ; they are in doubt what to plant and how, 
whether they shall buy trees or raise them from the 
seed, and numerous other practical queries which 
we hope to answer in future articles. In a some¬ 
what extended tour in various parts of the country 
a few months ago, we had occasion to see various 
plantations, from the youngest, with trees a few 
inches high, to the oldest artificial forest in the 
western states, if not in the whole country; and 
will embody in these articles the observations 
made on these visits. We shall not present any 
arguments in favor of tree planting, except to at¬ 
tempt to show" that it is profitable, in the several 
ways in which we have suggested. We have al¬ 
ready said that, in our view of the matter, much of 
the omission to plant trees is the notion that 
TREES ARE OF SLOW GROWTH. 
Of course trees vary much in this respect, and as a 
general rule the more rapid the growth the poorer 
the timber ; there are exceptions to this, and as 
will hereafter be shown, there are trees which 
make good wood rapidly; we take for the present 
an instance afforded by tbe European Larch. Sev¬ 
eral years ago, Mr. D. C. Schofield, of Elgin, Ill., 
sent us a statement of his experience with the Eu¬ 
ropean Larch. When we learned that small trees, 
which when set were mere whips, about 2 years 
old, had grown in 12 years to be 30 feet high, and 
12 inches in diameter at the base, we were in doubt 
whether to publish it or not; all that we knew 
about Mr. S. was the fact that he was a member in 
good standing in the Illinois Horticultural Society, 
and it was moreover in his favor that he was a sub¬ 
scriber to the American Agriculturist. Later we 
saw this same statement in a report accompanied 
by the hint that some allowance must be made for 
Mr. S.’s enthusiasm ; but soon Mr. S. exhibited, at 
one of the horticultural meetings, one of the trees, 
which was a sufficient answer to any one who chose 
to count the rings. At the meeting of the Ohio 
Horticultural Society, in 1871, Mr. Sherman gave an 
account of Mr. Schofield’s method of plauting an 
acre, which we will not now describe, except to 
say that the trees were planted thickly, to allow for 
periodical thinnings ; that the income from the 
first thinning, at the end of seven years, would be 
worth $120 ; the proceeds from a second thinning, in 
auother seven years, would bring in $1,000, giving- 
in 14 years, $1,120, while at the end of 30 years, 
with one more thinning, there would be left on the 
ground 300 trees, valued at $6,000, which, with the 
amount received for the three thinnings, would 
make au aggregate of $8,920, as the returns of a 
single acre, properly set with larch, at the end of 
30 years. All these accounts gave us a strong de¬ 
sire to see Mr. Schofield’s acre of trees, and last fall, 
being within a few hours’ ride of Elgin, we visited 
that gentleman, and saw not one acre, but many 
acres, and not a mere experimental plot, but a 
dense forest, with shady avenues, and where nature 
was doing her own pruning to form clear and state¬ 
ly trunks. We shall have occasion to refer to this 
plantation again, and do not now go into measure¬ 
ments; suffice it to say that we were convinced 
that if Mr. Schofield was an enthusiast, it is a 
great pity that many more were not afflicted in the 
same manner, and that we were fully convinced 
that there had been no over-statement or exaggera¬ 
tion in regard to his plantation. If any are in 
doubt that one in middle life can plant a forest with 
a hope of seeing a profitable result to his labors, a 
visit to this plantation would satisfy them. Other 
trees may yield even quicker returns than the larch, 
but we give this example because we have seen and 
examined it. It may be well to state here, that 
though Mr. Schofield has been so frequently men¬ 
tioned as an advocate of the European Larch, his 
forest is by no means confined to this, and he is a 
great admirer and enthusiastic planter of other 
trees, both evergreen and deciduous. 
The Trailing Arbutus in the House. 
The beauty and fragrance of the Trailing Ar¬ 
butus, or May-flower, (Epigcea repens ,) are widely 
known, and many wonder why it is not cultivated, 
until they have made several unsuccessful attempts 
to transfer it to their garden. Wc have transplant¬ 
ed it repeatedly, and always failed. It does not 
flourish in the same border with cultivated flowers, 
either in the shade or sunshine. It withers in 
garden soil. Manure is death to it. Transplanted 
to the cemetery-lot, the leaves turn brown and die. 
It is coy under all the wooing arts of the gardener, 
and delights not iu cold-frames or forcing houses. 
Madam, who is not a gardener, said she could make 
it live. She knew she could. “ She would like to 
see the plant she could not halter-break, and make 
it go under saddle.” She had a considerable to 
say about studying nature, the habits of plants, and 
the Trailing Arbutus growing on the north side of 
hills, courting the shadow of ledges and creeping 
under moss and dead herbage. I thought the 
plants would keep green for a time, and fill a vacant 
place iu the window, even if the experiment added 
to the often repeated failures. Late in October I 
procured the desired plants fresh from the woods 
with a quantity of the leaf-mold, and gravelly soil 
in which they grew. She put a part of theip in the 
Wardian case in a bed of moss, with ferns, Twin- 
berry, Adders-tongue, and other plants that love 
the shade. The Arbutus took kindly to the new 
atmosphere, and very soon began to make new 
shoots and leaves, and it is now the gem of the 
collection, and the admiration of the household. 
The other plants were put in a bed of leaf-mold in 
a soup-plate, two or three inches deep, and club- 
moss was trained around the edge of the plate for 
a border, making the dish a very pretty ornament. 
This dish has been kept in a room without fire, at 
a temperature varying from forty to sixty, under 
shelves appropriated to other plants. It does not 
receive the direct rays of the sun, but has plenty of 
light. It is watered two or three times a week, 
and the mold is kept moist. The plants evidently 
think April has come, though it is mid-winter, for 
the leaves are starting and the pink blossom buds 
are in sight. We give it up—Madam has a tri¬ 
umph. Connecticut. 
