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The Winds and the Woods: March: Seattle

Very picturesque is the method employed by the city fathers of Seattle to build up a better watershed near the source of the Cedar River from which Seattle gets its water-supply. Men plant the tree seeds along the barren, rocky walls of that region by fastening little bags of the seed to the heads of arrows and then shooting them against the walls. This bursts the bags, and many of the seeds, caught in the cracks and crevices of the rocks, later reappear as brave little Cedars, Firs, and Hemlocks. What these bows and arrows do, the winds are constantly doing. That's why you see trees of the Pine family clinging to rocks so steep and high that it would almost make a fly dizzy to climb them!

USEFUL HINTS FOR WOOD SCOUTS See if you can answer the following questions before reading the answers in the next chapter and in the "Wood Scout" notes at the end. Even when you don't think out the right answer yourself, and through discussion with other young foresters, the thinking will be good for your "thinker" and the answers will be twice as interesting. In school or in the family reading circle you could take turn about in preparing such "conundrums" from the next chapter to be read.

What object could there be in allowing weeds to grow in your tree nursery after, say, the beginning of September?

Can you think how the clearing off of the trees could cause the creeks and rivers to go dry?

Yet, how could this also result in the formation of unwholesome pools and marshes?

And the burying of fertile soil under sand and gravel? In a tree nursery, what would be the advantage of laying out the beds and planting the trees so that they run east and west?

The beds in a tree nursery have a sloping surface. What do you suppose this is for?