1911. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
660 
THE EUCALYPTUS TREE IN CALIFORNIA. 
Advice About Planting This Timber. 
It was during the closing days of the year recently 
ended that I had occasion to visit that garden region 
of Alameda County, lying about and a little beyond 
San Lorenzo, some 11 miles from Oakland. In pass¬ 
ing down one of the beautiful roads, past orange, 
trees and blooming roses, my attention was arrested 
by a number of husky young Japanese chopping and 
sawing away, a gigantic gum-tree (Eucalyptus 
globulus) that lay in a huge long mass from the 
sidewalk clear across a lawn to well nigh the front 
steps of a beautiful country villa It was one of the 
finest specimens of this tree that I had 
ever seen that fell a victim to the 
woodman’s ax. Two pairs of Japanese 
were tugging away at two crosscut saws 
cutting the wood into stove-lengths for 
fuel; four others were splitting the 
wood into suitable pieces to fit an ordi¬ 
nary cook stove. I learned shortly 
afterwards that all the fine Eucalyptus 
trees along this road were to be cut 
down, as they interfered with the elec¬ 
tric-light and current wires stretched 
from pole to pole close to these trees. 
It was in the immediate vicinity of the 
place I have mentioned that the truck- 
farmer was killed by coming in contact 
with chicken-yard netting that was 
charged with an electric current con¬ 
veyed from one of these power-current 
wires. Here was a case of the barn 
door being closed after the horse was 
gone—the company was trying to avoid 
dislocated and fallen wires as much as 
possible by removing the big trees that 
often unawares snap their big branches 
and come crackling to earth, carrying 
electric wires and everything else along 
with them. Often the Eucalyptus 
branches grow so powerfully big that, 
they are no longer self-supporting, and 
menace anything that may be beneath them. I have 
many a time heard them snap and break, and fall 
in a mighty mass to the ground, and woe be he who 
is caught beneath their weight. 
Late in the afternoon two days later I appeared at 
the scene of the Japanese activity fully equipped tQ 
secure some pictorial material of the scene for The 
R. N.-Y. I found the men still working on the tree 
they were cutting on my previous visit—they had 
worked up all but about 10 feet of the trunk. The 
cutting was hard; the trunk was a huge one as such 
trees go in California. As it was over 40 years old, 
and was most assuredly no “Spring chicken,” it was 
drop. This would have made this tree 126 feet tall. 
The first one cut was much taller, but no measurement 
was made, except that I found the diameter of the 
trunk, about 18 inches above the ground, to be a little 
over four feet. In Fig. 232 is a more distant view of 
the scene of this Eucalyptus cutting, so as also to 
show the trunks of a couple of denuded trees ready 
for the wood-butcher. The taller of the standing trunks 
is 60 feet. They convey some idea of the height of such 
of such trees; the majestic appearance they possess, 
and the lordliness they give the landscape; truly they 
are the monarchs of the surrounding vegetable world. 
At the terminus o? the branch trolley line in San 
Lorenzo, and opposite the leading hotel of the place, 
a chance perhaps never before offered in the State to 
acquire the finest hard wood lumber stuff of long 
lengths, free of knots and blemishes, and right up to 
four of the most pretentious, two of the largest 
manufacturing cities, in California. After waiting 
sufficiently long and having kept the electric line 
people waiting some time, as they were cutting the 
trees down at their own expense, Mr. Schlueter gave 
the word and the trees came down. Thus it has been 
clearly shown that the statements of the Eucalyptus 
land-boosters are false and without foundation. 
My advice is plant gum-trees on land you have, 
but do not purchase land with a vjew of planting it 
entirely to Eucalyptus, thinking you will make a 
fortune off it. There’s nothing in it; 
don’t be deceived Neither buy shares 
or stock in such land schemes; you 
will be taken in if you do. The 
Eucalyptus is a good tree in its place; 
it is good for fuel, shade and ornament 
—but don’t let it ornament the other 
fellow’s pocket. w. a. pryae. 
HEADY FOR THE WOOD BUTCHER. Fig. 232. 
hard and tough, and no picnic for amateur woodmen 
like the Orientals who were pushing and pulling at 
their saws, and swinging their axes on the job. And 
less than an hour before my reappearance, a gang of 
men from the electric light company equipped with 
climbers, ropes and cutting implements had felled an¬ 
other of the trees as shown in the foreground of 
Fig. 233. This latter tree was cut off 16 feet above 
the ground; the felled shaft was 85 feet long, but 
before it was felled some 25 feet of top had been taken 
off, so as to only leave the naked shaft for the final 
CUTTING UP EUCALYPTUS TIMBER IN CALIFORNIA. Fig. 233. 
is one of the finest and most imposing specimens of 
E. globulus in California. As it is on the main road 
between Oakland and San Jose, where thousands of 
automobilists pass it every week, it has come to be 
known far and wide. Unlike the great majority of 
these trees, it did not run up into a “bean-pole” as so 
many Eucalyptus do, but eight or 10 feet above the 
ground it branched out into a spreading head of great 
proportions. Its immensity may be seen by comparing 
it with the trolley car close by Fig. 234. I made no 
measurements, but should judge its trunk must be be¬ 
tween five and six feet. Its age is probably over 35 
years. This tree is growing in deep alluvial soil of 
wonderful fertility, and not far from a stream of 
water. I am happy to say that this fine specimen is to 
be spared by the woodman’s ax. 
I wish to make the destruction, perhaps necessary, 
of the trees mentioned in this article, an emphatic pro¬ 
test and denial of the claim of unprincipled persons 
who are exploiting the sale of lands in this State for 
the growing of Eucalyptus trees for commercial and 
other purposes—that there are immense fortunes to 
be made by growing this tree. I have known the tree 
a lifetime; my father was among the first California 
nurserymen to grow and disseminate the Eucalyptus in 
California. It was he and Bailley of Oakland; W. A. 
T. Stratton, of Petaluma, and W. F. Haskell, of San 
Jose, who raised them by the million in this portion 
of the State a generation and more ago. Monuments 
to their faith in the Eucalyptus are to be found to-day 
and for perhaps hundreds of years hence, in a thousand 
nooks and corners of California. But all their efforts 
have not made the tree a commercial possibility—per¬ 
haps it will be a generation before its worth will be 
fully appreciated. No finer wood for the wood crafts¬ 
man’s purposes is to be found anywhere. I examined 
pieces of the wood that the Japanese boys had cut as 
noticed above, and found it of fine and beautiful grain; 
it was heavy and of excellent color. I sought the man 
upon whose ground the tree had been grown. He is 
the postmaster of the place, Mr. H. F. Schlueter, a 
man of intelligence and learning. I wished to see him 
to learn if he had made an efforts to dispose of such 
splendid timber to some furniture manufacturer or 
dealer in hard wood for wagon and car building, or 
the like. He informed me that he had; that a man 
recently from the East who had seen the trees and 
appreciated the value of such timber, also interested 
himself to see if some one would not utilize the wood 
for a better purpose than common scrub-oak wood is 
usually put with us. Firms in San Jose, Oakland 
and San Francisco were communicated with; only one 
took the trouble to reply and promised to come and 
examine the trees. But he failed to do so. Here was 
IMPROVING THE POTATO. 
The article on “A Year’s Work in 
Potato Breeding,” by E. S. Brigham, 
(page 539) prompts me to relate my 
last year’s experience, as touching upon 
one phase of the situation. We are told 
by one class of plant-breeders that the 
potato is susceptible of marked and 
rapid change in the way of improve¬ 
ment ; and by another class of investiga¬ 
tors that the process of establishing an 
improved type of tuber, by selection, is 
a tedious and uncertain task. It must be 
that this great divergence of opinion 
among careful investigators working 
along the same line is due to soil and 
climatic conditions,—and possibly, to a 
difference in behavior of different va¬ 
rieties. The opinions are so utterly an¬ 
tagonistic that I see no other way of 
accounting for it. 
On June 2, 1910 in taking from the cellar some 
potatoes with sprouts three to five inches long, one 
unsprouted tuber was found (presumably a Bur¬ 
bank). The skin was smooth, eyes shallow, and it 
was nearly as firm as when dug. It weighed 12 
ounces, was cut to single eyes and planted, one piece 
in a hill June 3. Dug October 23, the yield was 54 
pounds, large, but mostly “prongy.” 
There were about 60 tubers in the lot, and of 
these about 50 might be called marketable. Of 
these 50 only was a reproduction in shap and 
appearance, of the parent tuber—approimately two 
per cent. This specimen weighed 18 ounces, was 
8inches in circuinferance, and seven inches long 
It was cut to the single eye, and planted on May 12, 
ONE OF THE BEST IN CALIFORNIA. Fig. 234. 
1911. Now, the “question before the house” is, what 
proportion of this crop will reproduce the qualities of 
the parent, the special traits that it is desired to 
establish as a “fixed type?” 
Yakima Valley, Wash. a. c. auldon. 
R. N.-Y.—Selection from the bin is by no means as 
sure as selection from the field. In the latter case 
we can observe the habit of the entire plant. It may 
or may not have the habit of forming uniform and 
well-shaped tubers. When taken from the bin we 
have no means of knowing whether the firm quality 
and good shape were accidental or true types of 
the plant. 
