3o8 



THE GARDENERS' MONTHLY 



[October, 



total annual discharge of the river, is no doubt 

 largely due to the destruction of the forests within 

 the drainage area, wliereby the conservative ac- 

 tion of the woodland is lost, and the rainfall is 

 permitted to descend rapidly to the bed and pass 

 off in a succession of freshets." Page 70, Report, 

 1884. 



The Schuylkill is the river that supplies Phila- 

 delphia with water. By minimum flow is the least 

 quantity that has flowed during any 24 hours in 

 the year. Col. Ludlow admits that there has 

 been no certain method by which the flow could 

 be measured, and he tells us at page 75 that 

 next year he will try and inaugurate a better 

 system. We may perhaps doubt if the smallest 

 quantity that came down in any one day in 1816 

 was five hundred million gallons a day. Still it 

 is possible that the remarkable difference between 

 1816 and 1874 stated, should not wholly exist. 



Presuming then that there has been a decrease, 

 is there ground for Col. Ludlow's statement " no 

 doubt the decrease is largely due to the destruc- 

 tion of the forests, etc.?" 



Singularly enough there was little if any forest 

 destruction on the headwaters of the Schuylkill 



between 18 16 and 1825, yet the figures show a 

 falling off of 60,000,000 gallons. The greatest 

 forest destruction was between 1825 and 1867, yet 

 though there is four times the period of time the 

 falling off has been no greater than in the single 

 ten years when there were no trees of any conse- 

 quence cut. In the last ten years, between 1867 

 and 1874, when there was comparatively little 

 timber left to cut, when the amount of timber was 

 nearly the same at the end as at the beginning of 

 the period, the river fell off nearly one-half. 



It is clear that whatever falling off there may be, 

 or is, the fact has no connection with the forestry 

 question. It will be an extremely interesting 

 study what is the cause of this remarkable differ- 

 ence in the river's summer flow ; but we shall 

 never know what the cause is if we accept without 

 hesitation Col. Ludlow's " no doubt " as true sci- 

 ence. 



Wood for Cigar Boxes. — Mr. F. R. Jackson 

 says in Gardeners' C^r<;«2V/£ that Cedrela odorata, 

 and not the Red Cedar, furnishes the wood of 

 which cigar boxes are made. 



Natural History and Science. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



New Races of Flowers. — Since it has been 

 well established by the work of the Florist that 

 the old maxim that "like produces like," as a test 

 of a true species, is just as characteristic of any 

 garden variety, much more encouragement is 

 given to experiments in getting new races of 

 flowers out of what would once have been re- 

 garded as mere freaks of nature, than formerly. 

 These so called freaks can be reproduced from 

 seed, and thus we are able to perpetuate all sorts 

 of curious things. Some one in the Old World 

 has thus fixed a curious freak in the common gar- 

 den Cyclamen, a representation of which we here 

 reproduce from the London Gardeners' Chronicle. 

 A lace-like frill has been developed from the petals, 

 and it may be termed the "Fringed Cyclamen." 

 It was raised by Mr. Clarke, a florist of Twicken- 

 ham, near London. 



There is a grand field among these freaks of 

 nature open before American flower lovers and 

 improvers. 



Sources of Nitrogen in Plants. — Mr. Dar- 

 win's careful experiments on the so-called carni- 



