Forestry

a systematic plan for rearing, cutting, and marketing forests. In America native forests have been so abundant that, aside from orchards, maple groves in some parts of New England, public parks, groves for shelter, and shade trees, no extensive planting of forests has been thought of seriously. It is difficult for an American tourist in a hilly part of Europe to realize that the green forests that clothe the sides of the hills and crown their summits, billow after billow, as far as the eye can reach, are as much the result of intelligent planting as are the fields of waving grain that extend across the plains. In Germany especially, one can follow a footpath for hours through magnificent forest solitudes, as primeval apparently as the forests of the New World. Deer, partridges, and rabbits are as natural in their ways as in the forest untrod by human foot. Aside from an occasional green coated forester, or possibly a hunter's lodge, there is nothing to indicate that the woods have even an owner. Not until the footpath brings one out into a clearing where woodcutters are busy, and into plantations where seed are planted and where young trees have attained but copsewood height, can he realize that the miles of forest are laid off in tracts, and that bands of men spend their lives in planting seed and setting out seedlings in tract after tract for a ninety years' crop of timber as deliberately as an American gardener goes at the planting of a six months' crop of vegetables. These systematic German forests date back, many of them, to about the day of Frederick the Great. Each year, or every few years, the owner of a forest culls out trees, or more likely clears a tract completely, and plants with seeds or with seedlings from a nursery. In this way the forests yield a perpetual income. Where the largest trees are today, seedlings will be under way a few years hence. Thirty, fifty, seventy, and ninety years are not unusual terms of rotation according to the kind of trees.

The following table gives some idea of the extent to which forestry is carried on public lands owned and managed by the various governments:

The table refers to lands under state management only. Statistics for private and community ownership are not complete, but cover several times as great an area with about the same financial results.

While it is impossible to go into detail, a few sentences caught up at random from the reports of the various countries cannot fail to be of interest. What is true of one country is not applicable to others. The comments show diversity of management. "Of the entire forest area, six acres to the thousand are planted each year." "The mature trees are cut out each thirty or forty years." "Blocks of evergreen are cut clear." "The crop is cut off in lengthy strips about thirty yards wide." "Each ten years we cut off and replant one-tenth of our forest." "We thin our forest each year." "We plant, each year, 110,000 pounds of seed of broad-leaved trees; 4,000 pounds of seeds of coniferous trees; 5,000,000 broad-leaved seedlings, and 5,000,000 coniferous seedlings."

The table shows that the cost of planting, gardening, and cutting and marketing equals about half the income. Superintendents of forests hold their positions for life, and receive about the same salaries that are paid American state superintendents of schools. Private owners pay proportionately. Schools of forestry are maintained in several countries to teach young men the best ways of raising timber. Officials require private owners to replant on penalty of fine, and in case of further neglect planting is done by the state and the cost assessed against the land. Freedom from taxation for thirty years is offered in some cases to encourage the planting of forests. Pines, firs, spruce, birch, oaks, beech, poplar, elm, alder, linden, walnut, and, near the Mediterranean, cork oak, are the trees chiefly planted. The forests of Europe yield turpentine, tar, charcoal, fuel, tanner's bark, cork, nuts, timber, plank, coopers' material, etc., according to the part of the country in which they grow.

Large rafts of logs are towed down the Rhine and other rivers. The mouth of the Clyde below Glasgow contains acres of logs in boom brought by ships from Norway. In hilly regions each considerable valley is apt to have a picturesque little sawmill. Very many villages and communities own a tract of public timber from which each family is entitled to take fuel. A warden sees that strict rules are complied with. Sound trees are cut at maturity under his direction and sold for the public benefit. Old men, women, and children may be seen gleaning dead and fallen limbs and carrying them home in bundles on their backs.

In Alsace-Lorraine the game privileges of the public forests are sold yearly to the highest bidder under certain restrictions as to number of animals to be taken. In a recent season, for instance, the forests yielded 42 red deer, 45 roe deer, 175 wild boars, and 2,555 hares and 24 capercailzies, besides squirrels, etc., a total of about four cents per acre.

Of late American interest has been aroused in forestry. Yale College has established a professorship of forestry. Cornell University and a number of Western agricultural colleges offer instructions in tree planting. Minnesota and other states have set on foot plans for replanting tracts that have been cut over and abandoned by the lumberman. New York has set aside a large tract in the Adirondacks. Congress has authorized the president to withdraw tracts of public land from settlement wherever in his judgment it is wise to preserve the timber. Up to 1909, 167,992,208 acres had been set aside, chiefly in the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific states. The department of agriculture has organized a bureau of forestry to manage the national forest reserves and to give practical assistance to state and private owners.

The great difficulty with forestry in America is the unwillingness of a democracy to wait fifty years for results. Then, too, our country is more subject to dry spells than is northern and central Europe. Forest fires are more apt to destroy our timber. The loss to American people during the summer and fall of 1908 was over $1,000,000 a day.

Forget-me-not, a genus of low, soft, hairy, flowering herbs. The botanical name, Myosotis, is Greek, meaning mouse-ear, in allusion to the short, soft leaves of some species. The common forget-me-not is a native of Europe and Asia. It belongs to the borage family which includes the puccoon, blueweed, bluebell, lungwort, stickseed, hound's-tongue, and heliotrope. Like other members of the family the forget-me-nots have curled flowering stems which unroll as the flowers mature. The fruit consists of four smooth-angled nutlets. The common forget-me-not has small sky-blue flowers, with a yellow eye. A species from the Azores, much favored by the florist, has a deep indigo-blue flower with a whitish eye. The common name of the forget-me-not is much the same in the various languages of Europe. It is everywhere the emblem of friendship. In the language of flowers it stands for remembrance.