A triplet tree grows on what is known as "Green's Ranch" in Cowley County, Kansas. The ranch is located five miles northeast of Arkansas City. The trees are about three hundred yards from the west bank of the Walnut River. They range in a line running north and south. They are between forty-five and fifty feet high. The first two on the north are eighteen inches apart. The third tree standing at the south end of the row is fifteen feet from the middle one. They are water elms, and average about three and one-half feet in girth. The tree standing at the north end of the row is hollow at the base and, leaning over southward intersects the central tree two feet from the ground; thence it extends to the one at the south end of the row, and intersects it with a limb from either side twelve feet above the ground. The segment of the circle described by the leaning tree is about twenty feet. At the points where the cross tree intersects the other two, it is not merely a case of contiguity, but of actual identification.
Another feature of the leaning tree is that half way between its base and the trunk of the second, and on the lower side is an unsightly knot about as large as a half bushel measure. Half way between the center tree and the one on the south, and on the under side of the leaning tree is another lump similar to the first, about half the size. These unsightly warts appear to have been produced by a congestion of sap in the tissue of the intersecting tree. This triplet tree is a curiosity. It presents a strange phenomenon in tree formation. But nature is everywhere full of mystery and surprises.
COUNTRIES DEVOID OF TREES.
ANYONE who has traveled through the comparatively treeless countries around the Mediterranean, such as Spain, Sicily, Greece, northern Africa, and large portions of Italy, must fervently pray that our own country may be preserved from so dismal a fate, says President Charles W. Eliot. It is not the loss of the forests only that is to be dreaded, but the loss of agricultural regions now fertile and populous, which may be desolated by the floods that rush down from the bare hills and mountains, bringing with them vast quantities of sand and gravel to be spread over the lowlands.
Traveling a few years ago through Tunisie, I came suddenly upon a fine Roman bridge of stone over a wide, bare, dry river bed. It stood some thirty feet above the bed of the river and had once served the needs of a prosperous population. Marveling at the height of the bridge above the ground, I asked the French station master if the river ever rose to the arches which carried the roadway of the bridge. His answer testified to the flooding capacity of the river and to the strength of the bridge. He said: "I have been here four years, and three times I have seen the river running over the parapets of that bridge. That country was once one of the richest granaries of the Roman empire. It now yields a scanty support for a sparse and semi-barbarous population." The whole region round-about is treeless. The care of the national forests is a provision for future generations, for the permanence over vast areas of our country of the great industries of agriculture and mining upon which the prosperity of the country ultimately depends. A good forest administration would soon support itself.—From January Atlantic.
SNOW PRISONS OF GAME BIRDS.