Prof. Beal says of his experience at Ann Arbor: "Four years ago I should have advised planting Catalpa speciosa where durable timber was desired, but further time shows that the trees are likely to be short lived." Our Western friends must not be in too much of a hurry either to praise or to condemn. They were cautioned from the first that their extravagant laudations of this tree were calculated to injure, and now we should fear that this experience of Prof. Beal at Ann Arbor too hasty on the other side, for a generalization. In the East we have Catalpa bignonoides a hundred years old and good for another hundred, and there is no reason why Catalpa speciosa is not as long lived except in exceptional localities like Ann Arbor.