Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar61909newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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process Is still be- ing carried on at the rate of one hundred acres planted yearly. The plantations are composed chiefly of white pine and short- leaf pine with a mixture of oak and hard maple. E X p e r i mental plantations of tu- lip, black walnut, black locust, ash and cherry have been made. The young trees for the plantations are raised on the estate. In connection with the Biltmore forest service is a school of forestry which is open to young men of good character. It is the most important private forestry school in America. A specialty is made of field-work, and the students play a most important part in measuring timber lands, lumbering, operat- ing the sawmill and the planing-mill, seeding and tree plant- ing, also in the nursery. All of this forms a portion of their out-door instruction while the lectures and study include a very complete course in sylviculture, the business of forestry, the quality and variety of the tree as well as so-called timber cruising and log and timber measurements. This also embodies surveying in all Its branches. A large mile- age of the lumber roads which have been constructed at Biltmore represent the surveys by the forest school. Again referring to the destruction by fire, it should be said that the spread of the flames was prevented only by the efforts of the mountaineers not only on the estate but in the vicinity who showed their friendship for the owner In this way. Three hundred men are employed at Bilt- more, and this force, with the students and the neighboring mountaineers, greatly assisted in extinguishing the fires. Transporting bark from Biltmore forest to the tannery but one of the best sections of the woodland was entirely ruined, represent- ing a work which has been in prog- ress for the last twenty years. It is what is known in forestry as the regeneration of the poplar tree, and the success of the foresters had attracted atten- tion to it through- out the United States. It must be said that the fire was the work of incendiaries, strange as it may seem. Although the object lesson which Mr. Van- derbilt has furnished the Southern people, and especially mountain folk, in his model farm, forests, dairy-work, and other features have been widely appreciated and have proved of much educational value to the South, he has had enemies like others who have tried to better their fellows. In pur- chasing lands to add to the estate he has at times been obliged to have the property appraised on account of the exorbitant price charged by the owner, and in this way has aroused
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Digging trenches to check a forest fire A fire that started in burning pine stumps enmity in some quarters. It Is be- lieved that the fires were started by persons of this class, and the van- dalism has aroused a strong feeling of Indignation In the vicinity. Relative to this Biltmore disas- ter and the menace of fire to forests in general. Dr. Carlos Schenck, the chief forester of Biltmore, gives the following statement: "Nothing can be more welcome to

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