ARBORICULTURE. 



?93 



be sent to the Forestry Associations of the 

 United States and to the Governors of the New 

 England States, New York, Pennsylvania, West 

 Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin and ^linnesota." 

 Louis ChablEj Secretary. 



PAYING NATURE'S PENALTY. 



As all men know, says the Chicago 

 Bvening Post, oi March 15, 1907, we 

 are a clever and a daring people; next 

 to the inhabitants of Mars we probably 

 have taken more liberties with the face 

 of nature than any other race: now 

 our annual day of reckoning has 

 oome. Within the last thirty-six hours 

 the Ohio River flood has caused 

 $15,000,000 damage at and near Pitts- 

 burg, and has made idle more than 100,- 

 000 workmen, besides claiming a number 

 of lives and placing thousands in danger. 

 It is called the spring flood ; it might be 

 termed Nature's revenge. 



The causes of the high water in the 

 Ohio, it is stated, are unusually heavy 

 rains coming with a sudden rise in tem- 

 perature that, almost in a night, melted 

 the deep snows in the mountains. That 

 is the immediate cause, back of which 

 stands the "tragedy of the trees." Years 

 agO' the hills, whence flow the streams 

 that unite to make the Ohio, were cov- 

 ered with dense forest growth. In those 

 days the snow, protected from the direct 

 ravs of the sun, melted slo'wly in the 

 springtime, and the soil, absorbing a 

 great part of the water, robbed the fresh- 

 ets O'f much of their menace. Heavy 

 rains, of course, brought high water and 

 sometimes floods, but not such a one as 

 that which is sweeping down the Ohio 

 Valley to~day. 



But the coming of the white man 

 sealed the doom of the forests. To-day 

 the trees have all but goiue from the 



mountains, and the result is told in the 

 telegrams from Pittsburg. Of recent 

 3'ears the Government has been aroused 

 to the necessity of saving what is left of 

 our forest lands East and West. Strange 

 as it may seem, this wise plan, cham- 

 pioned by President Roosevelt, has been 

 opposed in and out of Congress. How 

 many more floods in the river valleys ; 

 how many more droughts on the plains 

 will be needed to teach us that, clever as 

 we are. Nature's plan, can not be changed 

 entirelv without disastrous results? 



DISASTER MENACES TRUCKERS. 



Some H'\ve Lost Nearly Ale, and Now Fear 

 A Second Flood. 



"Cincinnati, March 22. — Desperate circum- 

 stances in the loss of their means of livelihood 

 menace hundreds of truck gardeners who eke 

 out an existence in the Millcreek valley. After 

 losing thousands of dollars in the January 

 flood, the small farmers between the C, H. 

 & D. Railroad and Spring Grove Avenue had 

 just fixed up new frames for the hotbeds, re- 

 plenished the broken glass, and gotten their 

 new crops fairly started, when the water again 

 threatens to wipe out the small capital they 

 have invested. Another two months of labor 

 will be completely lost. The relief committees 

 do not reach these people, for it is money with 

 which to rebuild their shattered fortunes, and 

 not food in most cases that they need. 



"Business was paralzed in the Pennsylvania 

 produce yeard Thursday and Friday of last 

 week. The yard looked like a lake, and the 

 only method by which the yard men could 

 reach their cars was by skiffs and small naphtha 

 launches, which were brought into requisition. 

 No selling was done out of the cars, with one 

 or two exceptions where they stood in the high 

 part of the yard, but it was necessary for the 

 men to reach the cars to observe the condition 

 of the stocks. The water was so deep in the 

 yard that it stood on tracks nearest the river 

 and reached the bottom of the beds of the cars 

 in other places. The water in Twenty-first, 

 Twentieth, Nineteenth and Eighteenth Streets 

 extended almost up to Penn Avenue, which is 



