April i, 1896.J 



Garden and Forest. 



131 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent, 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles: — The California Forest Reservations 131 



Women's Clubs and Forestry 132 



What Would be Fair Must First be Fit Charles Eliot. 13.- 



Salt and Sugar in Washingtonia filamentosa. Henry Trimble. 133 



New or Little-known Plants : — Nymphrea tetragona, Georgi. (With figure-) 



B. L. Robinson. 134 



Cannalialia. (With figure.) 134 



Plant Notes : — North American Plums 135 



Cultural Department: — Cyclamens from Seed Beth Day. 135 



Hippeastrums T. D. Hatfield. 136 



Seasonable Suggestions T. D. Hatfield, i^o 



Dendrobiums at the Harvard Botanic Garden Robert Cameron. 137 



Caladiums E. O. Orpet. 137 



Plants for Conservatory and Window Garden T. D. il. 13S 



The Climbing Hydrangea Joseph Meehan. 138 



Correspondence :— Ericas as Market Plants J.N. Gerard. 138 



Farming on Vacant City Lots.. Luther G. Sand, Stephen Bell, Gregory Smith. 139 



Exhibitions: — Boston Flower Show 139 



Notes 140 



Illustrations: — Nymphasa tetragona, Fig. 16 134 



Hybrid Canna Italia (reduced). Fig. 17 135 



The California Forest Reservations. 



IT is unnecessary, perhaps, to remind our readers that 

 the reservations of the public domain made by the 

 Government are of two classes : First, the so-called national 

 parks, comprising; the Yellowstone National Park, the Yose- 

 mite National Park, the Sequoia National Park and the 

 General Grant National Park. These four parks comprise, 

 together, about three million acres, the two last named, 

 which are situated in Tulare County, California, having 

 been established for the preservation of portions of the 

 Sequoia forests. They are now all under the strict control 

 and efficient protection of the army of the United States. 

 Second, there are seventeen forest reservations, compris- 

 ing-, altogether, about seventeen million acres, or 26,500 

 square miles, a territory more than half the size of this state, 

 and scattered from Alaska to Arizona, New Mexico, Colo- 

 rado and Wyoming. These reservations have been with- 

 drawn from sale and entry, but receive no more protection 

 from fire, timber-thieves and sheep-herders than the non- 

 reserved lands. The largest of the reservations, comprising 

 nearly five million acres, includes, it will be remembered, 

 the Cascade Mountain Range from the Columbia River 

 nearly to the borders of California. An attempt is now 

 being made, as was pointed out in these columns two 

 weeks ago, to deprive this reservation of its value by 

 opening a considerable part of it to' entry. Next in extent 

 is the Sierra Forest Reservation of more than four million 

 acres, stretching along the southern Sierras for over two hun- 

 dred miles, from the Yosemite National Park to the moun- 

 tains east of Bakersville, with an average width of about 

 fifty miles and containing the principal Sequoia forests. 



Some interesting and reliable information concerning the 

 actual condition of this reservation ami of the Yosemite 

 National Park is found in the seventh number of the Sierra 

 Club Bulletin, which has just reached us. It contains the 

 minutes of a meeting of the Sierra Club, a body of men 

 interested in mountain exploration and in the forests of 

 California, held November 25th, 1S95, and, besides other 

 matter, an address of the President, Mr. John Muir. and a 

 report on the Sierra Reservation made by Professor William 

 Russell Dudley, the distinguished botanist of the Leland 

 Stanford, Jr., University. Mr. Muir, whose knowledge of 



the Sierras and the Sierra forest is unequaled, passed six 

 weeks last summer, it appears, in the Yosemite National 

 Park, about the headwaters of the Tuolumne, and his 

 remarks on theresults of the fouryears' protection the park 

 had received from the Federal <iovernment are important 

 and encouraging. He says : 



When I had last seen the Yosemite National Park region 

 the face of the landscape in general was broken and wasted, 

 like a beautiful human countenance destroyed by some dread- 

 ful disease. Now it is blooming again as one general garden, 

 in which beauty for ashes has been granted in fine wild meas- 

 ure. The flowers and grasses are back again in their places 

 as if they had never been away, and every tree in the park is 

 waving its arms for joy. In what we may call homoeopathic 

 doses, the quiet, orderly soldiers have done this fine job, with- 

 out any apparent friction or weak noise, in the still calm way 

 that the United States troops do their duty. In my wanderings 

 this summer I met small squads of mounted soldiers' in all 

 kinds of out-of-the-way places, fording roaring bowlder-choked 

 streams, crossing rugged canons, ever alert and watchful ; 

 and knowing, as we do, the extreme roughness of the topog- 

 raphy of the park in general, our thanks are due these quiet 

 soldiers for unweariedly facing and overcoming every diffi- 

 culty in the way of duty. And always it is refreshing to know 

 that in our changeful Government there is one arm that is per- 

 manent and ever to be depended on. 



This testimony confirms what we have always believed, 

 that the moral force exerted by a small troop of United 

 States soldiers was capable of exerting an enormous in- 

 fluence in keeping marauders in the public reservations in 

 check, and that by keeping out the sheep-herders soldiers 

 could preserve the forests not only from the sheep, but from 

 most of the fires which are set by the herders to improve 

 the pasturage. 



The observations recorded by Professor Dudley, who 

 passed six weeks last summer in exploring the Sierra Forest 

 Reservation and studying its condition, are equally in- 

 structive. The following is part of his report : 



Where the sheep pass on the mountain slopesand summits, 

 there, indeed, is the trail of destruction and death. Before them 

 may be a pretty stretch tinged with hosts of red or yellow 

 Mimulus. Behind them is the dust of a harrowed field. Be- 

 fore them may be a level meadow in the forest, such as none 

 but an alpine sun ever shone upon ; velvet-green is the tender 

 grass, a thousand Asters of one form and color here, a thou- 

 sand Dodecatheons of another form and color there, tiny rills 

 of cold spring water dancing everywhere. Behind the herd 

 are no flowers, the green grass has been reaped as by the 

 reaper Death, the water is foul and festering. To pass from 

 the trampled meadows of the reservation to the protected 

 meadows of the National Park was a lesson in patriotism. The 

 nation that could so effectively preserve the inoffensive plants, 

 merely through the presence of a handful of its soldiers, was, 

 indeed, a nation worth living for. 



Professor Dudley, in the course of his journey, gathered 

 a good deal of testimony from the mountain and foot-hill 

 people in regard to the changes which had occurred during 

 the past twenty years in the vegetation of the region which 

 is now the Sierra Reservation. Their evidence all points to 

 the fact that the undergrowth in the mountain forests has 

 greatly decreased since they have been pastured by sheep. 

 A horse can now be ridden through these high mountain 

 forests, where twenty years ago it would have been prac- 

 tically impossible, on account of the underbrush, to have 

 wandered from the beaten trails. The destruction cau 

 by the sheep, which live on the young twigs of undershrubs 

 and on annual plants, is greatly increased by herders who, 

 in the autumn, on leaving the woods sel tire to the under- 

 growth in order to insure an abundant growth of tender 

 sprouts the following spring. Ranchmen and fruit-farmers 

 of the valleys, who are dependent on the water of mountain 

 streams, are now firm in the belief that thi ase in the 



undergrowth diminishes the flow of streams during the 

 summer, considering, as is undoubtedly a fact, thai 

 destruction of the underbrush has more effect on the 

 stream-flow than the destruction of the large trees. The con- 

 dition of White River is cited by Professor Dudley as p 

 of this general proposition. Formerly this stream is said 



