Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

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TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY

VOL. 1. NASHVILLE, TENN., OCTOBER, 1905. NO. 1

Luther Burbank

_He touched the spiculed desert--cacti-cursed-- And turned its thorns to figs, its thistles, fruit; He nodded to the daisy, half immersed In dwarfing dust, and lo! a lily mute Rose from the weeds--a perfume with a flute._

_And flowers ran to meet him--trailing vine-- And wild hedge-roses--they whose souls had died Beneath the feet of cattle and of kine-- Sought him--those pallid Magdalenes--and cried To touch his hem, and so stood glorified._

_Trees dwarfed and soulless--fruits with hearts of stone, Wedded at his word; and in the sacred tryst Of loves united, that had yearned alone, Gave to the world the nectar of their bliss In pitless peaches, crimsoned with a kiss._

_Who plants his poems in a berry’s bed, Or writes, with wild roses, sonnets to the sun, Hangs pictures on orchard boughs in gold and red, Makes epics of fruitland where before were none, Is Poet, Painter, Preacher--Master--all in one!_

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

Benefits of Forestry to Farmers

BY PERCY BROWN, OF EWELL FARM.

Note.--Mr. Brown is a practical forester, having been chief forester for the Houston Oil Co. and a graduate of Biltmore Forest School.--Ed.

The preservation of our forests is an imperative business necessity. We have come to see that whatever destroys the forest, except to make way for agriculture, threatens our well being.--President Roosevelt.

With abundant supplies of timber for farm consumption, farmers of the South have been inclined to regard the question of forest preservation merely as a matter of sentiment, and have come to look upon the forester as an impracticable sort of sentimentalist, whose main object in life is to keep some lumberman from cutting his timber.

This indifference has resulted in the loss of the support of the farming element to the cause of forestry, whereas the lumberman who at one time considered the forester his natural enemy and the forestry cause a clog in the wheels of progress, immediately began to investigate the question with a view of combatting forest legislation and the creation of a forestry sentiment throughout the country.

The result was that a thorough understanding of the objects of forestry and the aims of the forester has caused the lumbermen and lumber associations to give their unqualified support to all practical forestry legislation. And in the Southern States we find that the only journal of any importance that is persistently advocating forestry as a business is one of the foremost lumber journals south of the Ohio River.

The silence that the farm journals of the country have maintained on the question can be explained only by their ignorance of the question and its important bearing on the agricultural interests of the entire country. And as it is the purpose of this magazine to discuss all questions of vital importance as well as those that will be of passing interest to the farmers of the whole country it is well to begin with an understanding of what forestry is, and to advance a few reasons why the farmer should be the most ardent advocate of forestry.

Dr. W. H. Schlich, the noted English forester, says the task with which “forestry has to deal is to ascertain the principles according to which forests shall be managed and to apply these principles to the treatment of the forests.”

Dr. B. E. Fernow, formerly chief of the Division of Forestry, defines it as “The rational treatment of forests for forest purposes.”

Dr. C. A. Schenck, of the Biltmore Forest School, gives the following very broad and terse definition: “Forestry is the proper handling of forest investments.”

We see from these definitions that the forestry is purely a matter of business differing only from other investments in the time element. A forestry venture cannot be undertaken with a view of getting immediate returns, but contemplates the continuity of the investment which makes it the first duty of the forester to determine what is the best use the forest can be put to in order to obtain the greatest annual return upon the investment without drawing upon his capital invested. This does not necessarily mean that his forest must be devoted entirely to the production of timber, it may be maintained as a game preserve, or as a watershed, in which case the returns to be obtained from the sale of timber will be a secondary consideration.

Consequently we see that the forester is not merely a botanist or a tree planter, but in the fullest sense of the term is a technically educated man, with the knowledge of the forest trees and their history and of all that pertains to their production, combines further knowledge which enables him to manage forest property so as to produce certain conditions resulting in the highest attainable revenue from the soil by wood-crops.

The effect of forest cover and water-flow has been so persistently and constantly proclaimed as the one great need for forest preservation that the more important one of supply has been neglected.

In a series of articles by Dr. Fernow, on “The Outlook of the Timber Supply in the United States” (Quarterly, 1903), after carefully considering the data compiled by the Chief Geographer, together with his personal investigations, he summarizes the situation, which justifies the urgent need of the forester’s art in the United States, from the point of view of supplies, as follows:

1. The consumption of forest supplies, larger than in any other country in the world, promises not only to increase with the natural increase of the population, but in excess of this increase per capita, similar to that of other civilized, industrial nations, annually by a rate of not less than three to five per cent.

2. The most sanguine estimate of timber standing predicates an exhaustion of supplies in less than thirty years if this rate of consumption continues, and of the most important timber supplies in a much shorter time.

3. The conditions for continued imports from our neighbor, Canada, practically the only country having accessible supplies such as we need, are not reassuring and may not be expected to lengthen natural supplies appreciably.

4. The reproduction of new supplies on the existing forest area could, under proper management, be made to supply the legitimate requirements for a long time; but fires destroy the young growth over large areas, and where production is allowed to develop in the mixed forest, at least, owing to the culling processes, which remove the valuable kinds and leave the weeds, these latter reproduce in preference.

5. The attempts at systematic silviculture, that is, the growing of new crops, are, so far, infinitesimal compared with the needs.

That this is a question of serious importance to the South, as well as to the whole country, is shown by the great increase in the South’s production of lumber, which, owing to the depletion in other sections of the country, has risen from eleven and nine-tenths per cent in 1880 to twenty-five and two-tenths per cent of the total output of the United States in 1900, and it is not hard to predict an even greater production for 1910, when one concern alone has increased the number of its mills in the long leaf pine belt from seven to fifteen, and its daily output from 500,000 to 1,000,000 feet during the period from 1900 to 1904.

Basing their estimates upon the present standards of grading, the hardwood lumber journals are predicting the total exhaustion of the available supplies of this timber in fifteen years, and the hardwood lumbermen are already looking to forestry as a means of relief.

In an address delivered before the third annual meeting of the Hardwood Manufacturers’ Association of the United States, as an introduction to the subject of “The Hardwood Producing Centers of the United States,” Mr. John W. Love, of Nashville, said:

“I hope to be able to briefly call the attention of this body of practical manufacturers to a few pertinent facts that may, in a measure, at least, open our eyes to a painful truth, viz., the rapidly decreasing area of hardwood timber in the United States, and when we consider how very little is being done to conserve our forest growth--how the forests are being cleaned from hoop-poles to giant oaks, and that to supply the one item of cross ties that are used in this country alone, about 4,000,000,000 feet of timber is required (clearing about 200,000 acres of wood lot annually), and a large proportion of these ties are cut from thrifty young trees, we must conclude that a matter so weighty as to give us pause. The one hopeful sign of the future is the hope that practical forestry methods may be enforced by the Government.”

This in an address from a lumberman to an association of lumber manufacturers is indeed an encouraging sign of the times, but I fear he has waked up “to the realization that our efforts to secure a more rational treatment of our forest resources and apply forestry in their management are not too early, but rather too late: that they are by no means sufficient; that serious trouble and inconvenience are in store for us in the not too distant future; that the blind indifference and the dallying or amateurish playing with the problem of legislatures and officials is fatal.”

The railroads and the farmers of the Western plains were among the first to appreciate the importance of making provision for a future supply of construction timber and material for use on the farms.

With the far-sighted policy of manipulators of great corporations, the officials of the Santa Fe Railroad were among the pioneers in forest planting in America on railroads, as about twenty years ago they planted 1,280 acres in hardy catalpa at a total expense of $128,000, and they estimated that at the end of twenty-five years from date of planting this tract will have produced $2,500,000 of poles, ties and posts.

A few years ago the Illinois Central made a plantation of catalpa and black locust in Illinois and during the current year the Louisville & Nashville Railroad have arranged for a similar plantation in Alabama.

It has not been necessary for the farmers of the South to resort to plantations for their supplies of posts and fuel, and if we are not improvident of our supplies it will hardly become necessary, as we have left on nearly every farm enough timber of suitable varieties from which we can procure our future supplies by self-sown seed, provided the sections to be reserved for timber growth are protected from stock and fires. In some instances, however, it may prove cheaper and more expedient to plant as was the case with the now famous yaggy catalpa plantation near Hutchinson, Kan., in which a ten-year-old block showed a net value of $197, or a yearly net income of $19.75 per acre.

And a twenty-five-year-old plantation of red juniper, belonging to F. C. F. Schutz, Menlo, Iowa, showed a net value of $200.54 per acre, or a yearly net income of about $8--not a bad showing for forestry, when we bear in mind that the net income from other farm crops seldom exceeds that amount, but from the farm crops the returns are secured annually, while in the case of a forestry investment there is quite a period preceding the first harvest, during which we have to figure in an accumulative value.

All wood-lot planting should be governed by the local demand, for that reason it would be hard to suggest either methods or species for the South as a whole, but generally speaking, black locust (robinia pseudoacacia), hardy catalpa, mulberry and chestnut would be the most desirable, as the first three would be quickly available for fence posts, and the chestnut would always be in demand for telephone and telegraph poles as well as furnishing construction timber.

Wood-lot forestry has the advantage over similar work conducted on a large scale, as the farmer is at no expense for protection or supervision, the location of forest on the farm assures its safety from fire or trespass, and he gives it his personal attention.

However, to secure the most desirable management his supervision should be carried on under the direction of trained foresters.

To secure this without appreciable additional cost it is to his interest to ally himself with those who are striving for a State forestry system, under which a forester would be employed whose duty would be to look after the State reserves and give advice to farmers and timber land owners on the management of all forest tracts set aside for permanent forest investments.

The indirect utility of the forests is well known and appreciated by those who have given the matter any thought, but the average American farmer has little use for a thing which does not appeal to him in dollars and cents, however, the Bureau of Forestry realizing the great importance of this matter to the agricultural interests, sent Mr. J. W. Twomey to the San Bernardino Mountains of California to conduct investigations of the “Relation of Forests to Stream Flow,” and in the “Year-Book” of the Department of Agriculture for 1904 he reports these conclusions:

“In humid regions, where the precipitation is fairly evenly distributed over the year, and where the catchment area is sufficiently large to permit the greater part of the seepage to enter the stream above the point where it is gauged, the evidence accumulated to date indicates that stream flow is materially increased by the presence of forests.

“In regions characterized by the short wet season and a long dry one, as in Southern California and many other portions of the West, present evidence indicates, at least on small mountainous catchment areas, that the forest very materially decreases the total amount of run-off.

“Although the forest may have, on the whole, but little appreciable effect in increasing the rainfall and the annual run-off, its economic importance in regulating streams is beyond computation. The great indirect value of the forest is the effect which it has in preventing wind and water erosion, thus allowing the soil on hills and mountains to remain where it is formed, and in other ways providing an adequate absorbing medium at the sources of the water courses of the country. It is the amount of water that passes into the soil, not the amount of rainfall, that makes a garden or a desert.”

With such evidence as this before them, what farmer in the South will dare question the importance of forestry to the agricultural interests of every section of the South, and especially those sections lying adjacent to streams having their sources in the territory of the proposed Appalachian Forest Reserve?

By protecting the forest growth on the watersheds of these streams the flow of the water is rendered more continuous, and the dangers from violent floods, which destroy fences and carry away the most fertile soil, are lessened.

The South to-day is pre-eminent in agriculture and timber production, but the wasteful destruction of our forest resources bids fair to transfer the laurels to the great undeveloped West, where we find over 60,000,000 acres of forest reserves, which will for all time to come offer a continuous supply of lumber for the manufacturer and an abundance of water for the farmers who have made a garden of the deserts.

It is the duty of the Southern farmer to join with the hardwood lumberman in his efforts to introduce forestry in the South, and by so doing give to succeeding generations the heritage that except for the destructive forces of man would have come to them in nature’s great scheme of things.

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TO THE CAHABA RIVER

Ay, laugh along, thou cypress-crown’d stream, Thou echo of the cloud’s kiss on the hills, A Southern maid with eyes of deep-pool gleam And cheeks of dimpled whorls and smiles of rills.

Dance, sweet, on sward of violet-crested green, Marked with the silvery pathway of thy track-- With blue embossing ridge of hills between And hair mist in the soft wind floating back.

And sweet with soul of aromatic leaves, Steeped in thy crucible of sun-warmed pool, And with the warm breath of the bay, that grieves His love-sigh out amid thy shadows cool.

Dance, sweet, adown thy pathway’s wooded hush, Laughing to ’scape the red arms of the hills, Yet bringing on thy cheek the telltale blush, For chattering tongues of all the old dame mills.

The live-oak bends to kiss thee, and his sigh Is mingled with the passing of thy charms; The willows start from hidden coverts by To clasp thee in their looping, lover arms.

Is that deep shadow dark’ning now thine eye Repentant sorrow for the willow’s plight, As though the stern gloom of the cypress nigh Thou speedest like a Naiad of the night?

O life--life--life--and hast thou found it so, A journey now in sunlight, now in shade-- A laughter from the willows bending low A gloom-sob which the cypresses have made?

JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

Little Sister

Little Sister was Col. Rutherford’s only grandchild. She was also Capt. John Rutherford’s only niece. I mention the last-named gentleman because he had a great deal to do with the making of this story. He was quite original himself, and a braver, bigger-hearted friend no man ever had.

The Rutherford home was in the Middle Basin of Tennessee. The house was built in 1812 by John Rutherford the first, who had eaten, slept, fought, and finally died, with his old friend, Andrew Jackson. No truer, better, braver people than the Rutherfords lived. No black sheep ever came out of the flock. I have always maintained that a family’s ability to refrain from throwing scrubs is the truest test of its purity. The prepotency that produced dead-game, honest and true men and women every time, is a long way ahead of “Norman blood.” “That’s the genuine stuff,” as little three-year-old Sister once naively remarked after looking over Uncle John’s pacing filly. However, that’s a story I will tell later.

When I first knew Little Sister she was only two years old, for just two years before a terrible gloom had settled over the Rutherford home when Little Sister’s mother, the Colonel’s daughter, had died. Death is a terrible, bitter, hollow mockery to those who live. Some day, in another world, we shall see things differently. In this, “cabined, cribbed, confined” in our puny environments, we see only “through a glass darkly,” and so God help us.

As I said, she was the old Colonel’s only daughter--the fairest, frailest, most lovely and most intellectual--a bride one year, and we buried her the next. That’s all, except Little Sister, a fair, frail, hot-tempered, sensitive--all brain and nerve--little tot who came to take her mother’s place. Her bright blue eyes, pale-pink face and red-flaxen hair kept one thinking of perpetual sunsets and twilights. She was a _fac simile_ of her mother--intellect, impulsiveness, loveliness, all except one thing--temper. She was fire and powder there. A flash, an explosion--then she was sobbing for forgiveness in your arms. That was Little Sister.

“I can’t see where in the world she gets her temper from,” Grandmother Rutherford said when two-year-old Little Sister slapped her squarely in the face one day and then hung sobbing around the old lady’s neck as if the blow had broken her own heart.

“Col. Rutherford,” she would add impressively, “this child ought to be spanked till she is conquered.”

“Don’t do it, mother,” said Uncle John, while Little Sister gave him a grateful look through her tears; “don’t do it; that is not the way to train race colts. A conquering, your way, would spoil her. She will need all of that temper, if it is brought under control, to get through life with, and land anywhere near the wire first. Besides, with her sensitiveness, don’t you see she is suffering now more than if we had punished her? If she were a plug, now, she would slap you and never be sorry till you made her sorry with a switch. But conscience beats hickory, and gentleness is away ahead of blows.”

And Uncle John would catch the two-year-old up and take her out to see the colts. At sight of these she would forget all other trouble. Her love for horses was as deep in her as the Rutherford blood. When she saw the colts it was comical to see the great burst of sunshiny laughter that spread all over her conscience-stricken face, while two big tears--such big ones as only little heart-broken two-year-olds can originate--were rolling slowly down her nose.

“Oh, Uncle John,” she would say gleefully, “now, ain’t they just too sweet for anything? Do let me get down and hug them, every one.” And Uncle John would let her if he had to catch every one himself.

The clear-cut way she talked English reminds me that there were two things about Little Sister that always astonished me--her intellect and her great sense of motherhood. I could readily see how she inherited the first, but could never understand how so tiny a thing had such a great big mother-heart. She loved everything little--everything born on the farm. The fact that anything in hair, hide or feathers had arrived was an occasion of jollification to her.

“Oh, do let me see the dear little thing,” would be the first thing from Little Sister that greeted the announcement. And she generally saw it; at least, if Uncle John was around. It is scarcely necessary to add that during the spring of the year, on a farm as large as the Rutherford place, she was kept in one continual state of happy excitement.

One day they missed her from the house, and Uncle John quickly “tracked” her to the cow barn, for it occurred to him he had only the day before shown her the Short-horn’s latest edition--a big, double-jointed, ugly, hungry male calf, who slept all day in the bedded stall like a young Hercules, and only waked up long enough to wrinkle his huge nose around and mentally make the remark the Governor of North Carolina is said to have made to the Governor of South Carolina. But Little Sister had declared he was “perfectly lovely.” That is where Uncle John found her. She had climbed over the high stall gate, unaided, and, after becoming acquainted, she had given young Hercules, as a propitiary offering, her own beautiful string of beads and placed them around his tawny neck.

“Come out of there, you little rascal,” laughed Uncle John. “What do you see pretty about that big, ugly calf?”

“Oh, Uncle John,” sighed Little Sister, “I’m so sorry for him--he isn’t pretty, to be sure--and so I have given him my beads. But he has a lovely curly head,” she added encouragingly, “and he seems to be such a healthy child.”

On another occasion they missed Little Sister about night. Everybody started out in alarm. Grandma found her first, coming from the brood-sow’s lot.

“Where in the world have you been, darling?” asked Grandma, as she picked her up.

“Playing with the little yesterday pigs,” she said. “And, Grandma, I ought to have come home sooner, but I kissed one of the cunningest of the little pigs good-night, and all the others looked so hurt, and squealed so because I didn’t kiss them, too, I just had to catch every one of them and kiss them before they would go to sleep. Indeed, I did.”