"F.," Lincoln, Nebraska: "I am always particularly interested in the forestry column of the Gardeners' Monthly, and note that you lay stress on the difference between American forest culture, and that recommended in English works. I am inclined to venture largely on Forest culture. In what respect do you consider English practice defective ?"

[Chiefly in their oversight that time is money. If we can get a tree in twenty-five years as large as by some other plan it would take fifty years to grow, it is a big saving. The European forester would plant trees, say six feet apart, and in two or three years the whole becomes a struggling mass of vegetation. To correct this he cuts out every other one for hoop poles, the proceeds in that land of cheap labor yielding a profit. In a few years he thins again, the produce being sold for hoop poles or something of that sort; and so he keeps on thinning, till when the trees are fifty years old he has timber to cut. All the guess-work figures in the English forestry works show large profits by this method, but the actual figures from those who have tried, show large losses. We have to remember that the trees thinned out are not grubbed out, but cut down, and so sprout up and form underbrush. All this growing vegetation takes food, and is so much subtracted from the trees left for permanent timber. The trees set out as we would set an orchard, and kept as we would an orchard, would have been as large in twenty-five years, as they are in fifty under this old-country method.

Aside from all this, the dead brush left from the trimmings is a continuous source of danger from fire, and never ought to be permitted by law in a dry, warm climate like ours.

For our country a forester should set out about 200 trees to the acre; crop for two or three years in some good desirable farm product, until the trees had grown so as to claim all the ground for themselves, then let them have it, or graze if desirable, when the trunks are strong enough to take care of the tree.

In a general way this is our idea of good American forestry practice, though, of course, allowance must be made for the want of clearness which a brief paragraph like this necessitates. - Ed. G. M].