20 



THE GARDENERS MONTHLY 



[January, 



tion of the "narrow-mindedness which was re- 

 luctant to make a personal sacrifice for the in- 

 terest of all." He looks back lovingly to the 

 time in France when the "Church and religious 

 institutions," and great land-holders in their in- 

 terest, had possession of most of the lands of 

 France. Then they had forests indeed ! and the 

 happy owners would hunt and sport to their 

 heart's content. 



Fortunately, these views do not suit our 

 American atmosphere. We want timber be- 

 cause we have use for it ; we want planting en- 

 couraged where it can be done with some show 

 of being within no remote time useful. We do 

 not want to tax ourselves too heavily for the 

 benefit of posterity ; but it is the duty of govern- 

 ments to look after that which private enterprise 

 will not do, when it bears on national prosperity ; 

 but no American wishes that all the cost of this 

 national work should fall on the " penurious 

 farmer." They are all willing to lend a hand, 

 and would rather raise a "penny subscription 

 from every American," than be charged with in- 

 justice. 



Lumber in Virginia.— The Chesapeake & Ohio 

 Hallway is now consuming lumber and timber 

 at the average rate of 600,000 feet a month. In 

 the seven past months of this year, its consump- 

 tion has been 4,200,000 feet, brought mainly 

 from along its line in West Virginia. Much of 

 this has been used in the Newports-News ex- 

 tension. 



A Large White Oak.— A white oak tree re- 

 cently cut in Salem County measured six feet 

 and two inches across the stump. Trees of this 

 size are now scarce in South Jersey ; or East 

 Jersey either for that matter.— iV; J. Mirror. 



Waters of Lake Ontario.— The daily papers 

 say that : 



" No little concern is felt by persons interested 

 in the harbor accommodations of Lake Ontario 

 by reason of the assured fact that the level of 

 the lake has fallen steadily, and in a marked de- 

 gree, for many years. The records have been 

 accurately kept, and leave no room for doubt. 

 Many wharfs in many ports were formerly ac- 

 cessible to vessels which cannot now come near 

 them. The entrance to the harbor of Toronto 

 has been kept open only by means of thorough 

 dredging, and now, when rock bottom has been 

 reached, there is scarcely enough water to float 

 the largest of the vessels which seek to pass. 

 Various explanations for the subsidance of the 

 water have been offered, but none of them seems 

 to be adequate." 



In these cases geological reasons are usually 

 satisfactory. A change in the streams which 

 flow underground, make a great diff'erence in 

 the flow of a lake. But it will be in order to 

 have the above paragraph in the next treatise on 

 forestry. 



Forest Fires. — Ontario is said by the daily 

 papers to have lost $10,000,000 by the forest fires 

 of last season, — and next year, and another, and 

 another, she will probably lose $10,000,000 every 

 time. And yet all this may be avoided by 

 spending a few hundred thousand dollars in 

 carefully keeping down underbrush ; and insist, 

 ing on the burning at once of the waste from 

 forest clearings. But somehow it seems both to 

 Canadians and Americans much easier and more 

 humanitarian to raise half a million dollars to 

 give to the widows and orphans of suff"erers by 

 fire, than to spend a quarter of a million in pre- 

 venting their homes, with the fathers and hus- 

 bands, from being burned up. It is a funny 

 world, especially where it is about forestry. 



Natural History and Science. 



COMMUNICA TIONS. 



SCIENCE NOTES- 



BY PROFESSOR T. C. PORTER, EASTON, PA. 



In a recent number of the Monthly you say 

 with a doubt, that you encountered the famous 

 potato bug on the plains of Colorado in 71. In 73 

 I saw a stalk of Solanum rostratum in a new 

 street on the outskirts of Denver, covered with 



them, and saw them also on the same plant at a 

 railroad station of the Kansas Pacific, between 

 Salina and Denver. 



Is Campanula rotundifolia to be Hair-bell, or 

 Hare bell ? The Origin of the name should de- 

 termine that. I see no connexion between the 

 flower and the hare. The plant grows on steep, 

 rocky cliffs, which hares do not frequent. Nor do 

 I see any connexion between the flower and hair, 

 except the remote supposition that it might have 



