The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1892-08-24
Editorial NOtings.

WE are indebted to the repeated
kindness of John Craig, E.q., director
of the Dominion Experiment Station at
Ottawa, Canada, for a copy of the An
nual Report of the Fruit Growers
Association and chronological Society
of Ontario; and find the work filed
with most valuable information on
variety of subjects interesting to fruit
growers and other cultivators of the
soil. Mr.. Craig is engaged, among
other important matters, in thorough
testing of all the tree fruits of Russia
in this doing a work for the East as es-
sential as that of Professor Budd of
Iowa is for the West.
PROFESSOR PETER COLLIER, well
known to our older improving farmers
as the first secretary of our Vermont
Board of Agriculture, afterwards chem
list of the national Department of Agri-
culture, and now director of the New
York Agricultural Experiment Station,
kindly favors us with the tenth annual
report Of that institution. Like Profess
sor Cooke of Vermont, Professor Col
lier gives a good deal of time and space
to the dairy interest, as a leading one
of his state and his report is one es-
pecially useful to dairymen-about $50
pages being given to that subject. In
addition, insecticide and fungicide
spraying, analysis of fertilizers, small
fruits, large fruits, vegetables, etc,
have due attention given them. 1t is
very able and useful report.
NOTHING in this department has eX-
cited more interest than the notes on
remarkable trees; and we hope they
will be continued. There are such
trees in every town, and we trust there
is some reader, also, in every town who
will take the trouble, for the general
benefit, to send us notes on such trees;
and also on the general subject of our
forest trees, forest care and improve
ment, etc. -
OUR venerable friend, Rev. NJ. r.
Keep of Ashland, Aroostook county,
Me.-a native Vermonter and the
pioneer minister of Aroostook, and also
the first to climb and explore Katah-
din, Names highest mountain in the
northern wilderness-though getting
near his ninetieth year, kindly takes up
his pen to tell us something about the
Aroostook woodlands. Naples are
abundant there, but are about at their
northern limit, and much less abun-
dant sugar producers than in Vermont.
Mr.. Keep says: GAS inquiry is made
as to the varied flow of sap, this is gen.
orally owing to the vigorous or slow
growing condition of the tree, as af-
fected by soil and climate. In this lati-
tude (470 north) the naples on an av-
erage make but one pound of sugar to
tree; while in latitude 45' they yield
two or three pounds. Although our
Aroostook naples are stately, and SEEM
ingly healthy, but few of them make
timber fit for saving or ship-building.
The yellow birch, on the contrary, in
creases in vigor and value for timber
up to this point; but fifty miles north
of here they disappear The great flow
of some particular naples is generally
due to springs of water into which
their roots reach. The hemlock, here,
has not sufficient life for peeling bark
or saving into boards of much value,
and mostly disappears thirty miles
north of us. The white ash occupies
nearly the same limits. The butternut
has freak hard to explain. On the
Penobscot river it disappears on lati-
tude 450 except by cultivation; while
in the province of New Brunswick it
reaches thirty miles north of 470, and
its line of separation from us is exactly
north and south more than 100 miles
on the boundary between the province
and the state. Five miles from Maine
are heavy primeval forests of these
trees, capable of making more than
1000 feet each of cabinet lumber. A
new variety of sugar maple has been
introduced at Fort Kent, coming from
the lower valley of the St. Lawrence in
Canada, called the ash maple, having a
very rapid growth at Fort Kent, where
the native maple cannot be transplanted
on the intervales. l suppose il is an
importation from Europe. 1t has a
marvellous growth, like our summer
vegetables. 1t closely resembles our
maple, only part of the leaves are in
form like the ash tree leaves"
THESE ash-leaved naples (acer ne
gundo) referred to by Mr.. Keep, are
very interesting tree, and valuable for
the region beyond where our sugar ma