1882.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



19 



grown upon a tree planted in March, 1880, and 

 now 3i feet high. It is one of the smaller va- 

 rietes, but of excellent quality." 



[Hard worked editors cannot get around to 

 see all the new things as they would like to do, 

 and are always grateful to those who help them 

 to keep their knowledge up to the times in the 

 kind manner Mr. Berckmans has done. It was 



a pleasure to see such fine fruit. One of them 

 weighed 6^ ounces, and was exhibited to the 

 Germantown Horticultural Society. 



We have tried, and know others try, many 

 varieties near Philadelphia, but all have been 

 killed to the ground by the winters ; but why 

 can they not be grown in tubs as oranges and 

 lemons are?— Ed. G. M.l 



Forestry. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Timber is King.— Prof. P. W. Sheafer, of Potts- 

 ville, in his excellent paper on the geology of 

 Schuylkill county, says : " In Schuylkill county 

 we are specialists. We are dependent on one 

 substance ; coal is king." We fancy after 

 awhile it will be found in Schuylkill county that 

 timber is king. It is not possible to work a coal 

 mine without timber. Of Pinus rigida alone 

 enough is used by one company in that county 

 in one year to reach, if the logs are placed end 

 to end, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. 



Forests will soon have to be planted there in 

 an intelligent manner, or coal will no longer 

 have regal honor. 



Pkotection to Forestry. — The United States 

 Government is already doing much to protect the 

 lumber interest in so far as it concerns the des- 

 truction of our forests, and there can be no 

 reason why it should not recognize the same 

 principle in the encouragement of new planta- 

 tions. While farmers and fruitgrowers have t© 

 build their own railroads, or construct their own 

 canals, the Government spends money for the 

 sole reason that the forest-owners may get theirj 

 timber to market. Immense sums of money 

 have been spent on the Guyandot River in West 

 Virginia, for no other reason than improving 

 on raft navigation. 



Protection of Forests a Necessity.— By S- 

 VanDorrien. New York : B. Westerman & Co. 

 This is a pamphlet of thirty-one pages, which 

 goes over and over again the same old story : 

 trees, clouds ; clouds make rain ; rain makes 

 springs ; springs make rivers ; rivers make seas ; 

 seas make universal prosperity. Well, everj'- 

 body knows the story. What is really needed is 



not sermons of this sort ; but to know what is the 

 best method of encouraging timber culture ? It is a 

 pity some good, practical mind does not turn its 

 attention more to this matter, and to ease the 

 minds of the poets and philosophers, who are 

 forever urging that " something must be done," 

 but leave to others the work of doing and paying 

 for it. We read carefully through this pamphlet 

 to get some good idea as to what ought to be 

 done. To our amazement, the only comfort 

 after reading thirty-one pages is the assurance 

 that " what is to be done, must be done at 

 once." 



There is one satisfaction, however, in reading 

 it; we may learn what not to do. If there is 

 any special object in the author's mind as he 

 wrote, besides the furnishing of a pen -portrait of 

 an arboreal Jeremiah, it is that our Government 

 should do something, — something because for- 

 eign governments have done something; but a 

 careful reading of what he tells us about the 

 action of foreign governments, shows their action 

 to have utterly failed to be of the slightest 

 benefit. No one would for an instant want to 

 liave repeated here what has been attempted 

 there. Strange to say the writer seems to sym- 

 pathize with the tremendous tyranny and oppres- 

 sion which has often been attempted under the 

 name of forestry laws. He takes occasion to re- 

 flect on the " demoralizing penuriousness of the 

 agricultural classes," who seemed to think they 

 had the same right to try and make all tbey 

 could from their land as the mill-owner would 

 from his mill ; he thinks it scandalous that the 

 farmer should '' loudly demand indemnity " for 

 being compelled to keep his land in forest when 

 it would pay him so much better to make graz- 

 ing ground of it; and he can scarcely find lan- 

 guage strong enough to characterize his detesta- 



