April 15, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



159 



the circles are very inaccurately centered — that is, the axes of 

 the paths do not point to the centres of the circle, and if the 

 designs were executed as shown on the map the result would 

 be disastrous. This, however, may be simply carelessness on 

 the part of the draughtsman. I should add that both plans 

 ought to show greater seating capacity. Seats ought to be 

 recessed so that the feet of those using them will not be in the 

 way of pedestrians, because the paths as wide as those in the 

 plans give no more than the necessary walking space. 



New York. L. G. S. 



Meetings of Societies. 



Forestry in Pennsylvania. 



A NOTABLE event was the spring meeting of the Pennsyl- 

 vania Forestry Association and Arbor Day celebration, 

 which occurred in Philadelphia on Friday, April 10th, with the 

 cooperation of the trustees and faculty of the University of 

 Pennsylvania and the trustees and faculty of the Drexel Insti- 

 tute. The planting ceremony comprised afternoon exercises 

 in the chapel of the University of Pennsylvania. Perhaps so 

 enthusiastic an audience never before assembled in the inter- 

 ests of forestry in America. The Governor of the common- 

 wealth, Mayor of the city, Provost and faculty of the University, 

 chief of the National Forestry Division, the State Forest Com- 

 missioner, the president of the Pennsylvania Forestry Associa- 

 tion and other public officials, the members of the Pennsylvania 

 Forestry Association and friends of forestry and of the Univer- 

 sity made up part of the audience, but the impressive feature 

 of the great gathering was the hundreds of earnest young men, 

 students of the University. The spontaneous ringing applause 

 when telling points were well made by the speakers was 

 doubtless inspired by patriotism sometimes as much by pro- 

 test against the wasteful destruction of forests or the proposal 

 ot forest reform, but the effect in the direction of wiser forestry 

 policy was none the less strong on the minds of the audience. 



Provost Harrison, in opening the meeting and giving it into 

 the charge of Mr. John Birkinbine, President of the Pennsyl- 

 vania Forestry Association, said that Pennsylvania once had 

 the greatest relative forest area of any of the colonies north of 

 Virginia, and now has the least relative forest area of the 

 states north of Virginia, excepting Connecticut. Mr. Burkin- 

 bine explained that his interest in forestry was aroused in con- 

 nection with the hydraulic and metallurgical factors in railroad 

 building. Governor Hastings was then introduced, and spoke, 

 among other things, of the far-seeing wisdom of Penn, who 

 aimed at the planting and preservation of the Oak-trees for 

 ships and of the Mulberry-trees for silk ; of two rows of trees 

 along every street of the city, and the clearing of only five out 

 of every six acres of forest by the settlers. Mayor Warwick's 

 fancies and facts completely captured the audience. He said 

 much of Shakespeare's poetry was due to his having yielded 

 to the influence of nature in the Stratford and Coventry country. 



Professor Rothrock, State Forest Commissioner, then read a 

 letter from General Paul A. Oliver, of Wilkesbarre, giving a 

 history of the scion of the Penn Treaty Elm, to be planted in 

 connection with these exercises on the University campus, as 

 a memorial to William Penn. Some account is already re- 

 corded in Garden and Forest, vol. v., p. 312, and vol. viii., 

 p. 240. The little tree to be planted now was taken from a 

 shoot of the Oliver tree on the 1st of March, 1893. Nathan C. 

 Schaefer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, made an 

 effective address, and, describing the love of German students 

 for trees about their alma mater, called upon the loyalty and 

 care of the students of the University of Pennsylvania for this 

 historic grandchild of a great tree. 



Mr. Fernow, representing the National Government, said 

 that the American people had made two great mistakes, one 

 moral, the other economic ; one in the treatment of the In- 

 dians and the other in the treatment of the forests, and that 

 Penn, in whose memory this tree is to be planted to-day, made 

 neither of these mistakes. He said the planting would be a 

 memorial of moral rectitude and advanced national economic 

 thought. 



The planting of the trees on the campus facing the main hall 

 then followed, Governor Hastings doing the actual planting. 

 In the name and by the authority of the commonwealth of 

 Pennsylvania, the Governor commanded Provost Harrison 

 and the University generally to care for the tree. The Provost 

 accepted the trust, and promised also that trees would soon be 

 planted along the entire three miles of streets surrounding the 

 University, the plans for the work being already in hand. 



At the evening meeting, in the Drexel Institute, the first ad- 

 dress was that of Governor Hastings, who spoke on the neces- 

 sity of preserving the forests of Pennsylvania. After sketching 



graphically the original extent and wealth of our unbroken 

 Appalachian forests which stretched from Maine to the Gulf, 

 he showed how rapidly these had melted away before the axe 

 of settlers, whose descendants were continuing this destruc- 

 tion while other nations had been taught by a disastrous expe- 

 rience to begin with infinite pains and cost the work of forest 

 restoration. Leaving aside the broader economic and sanitary 

 value of our forests, he quoted figures to show that the annual 

 product of our forests was fifteen times as great as that of all 

 our gold and silver mines, and more than double that of all 

 the minerals as well as the natural gas, and slate and building 

 stone which are dug from the earth in a year. Coming to his 

 own state, he said that during the last ten years the timber 

 crop of Pennsylvania had aggregated more than two hundred 

 millions of dollars. Three-fourths of the timber in the state 

 had already been marketed, the railroads had invaded the 

 woods where streams were not large enough to float the logs, 

 and the portable sawmill was making havoc with the smaller 

 growth on the hills and the wood-lots on the farms. He gave 

 Commissioner Rothrock as authority for stating that if the 

 land in Pennsylvania unfit for farm purposes, and now worth 

 not more than $1.00 an acre on an average, could be protected 

 from the axe and the brand, the value of the timber crop on 

 this land at the end of fifty years would be a billion and a half 

 of dollars, or an average of thirty million dollars a year, and 

 this estimate makes no account of the saving of life and prop- 

 erty from frequent floods, or of the improvement to agricul- 

 ture and other industries and the promotion of the public 

 health, which would certainly follow. He asserted that these 

 tremendous interests make it the essential duty of the com- 

 monwealth to restore and protect the forests on the highlands 

 of Pennsylvania wherever this is possible. This great waste 

 forest area should be under proper guardianship and no 

 interest of such public importance should remain in private 

 hands. It was the welfare of the people at large, pure water, 

 public health, which forest destruction threatened. Altogether 

 the Governor made a strong and reasonable plea for state 

 action in the interest of the state at large. 



In the course of a very instructive paper, Mr. B. E. Fernow, 

 head of the Forestry Division of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture, said that there are two points of view from which we may 

 look at the forestry movement : first, the one which a thinking 

 lumberman and forest-owner ought to take when he considers 

 only the perpetuation of supplies of useful material which the 

 forest can yield, and, secondly, the broader one which the 

 statesman and every patriotic citizen is bound to take in addi- 

 tion to the first — that is, he must consider the role which the 

 forest plays as a factor in our civilization, as a general condi- 

 tion of the country which, if irrationally altered, must lead to 

 the misery of the whole community. The influence of the 

 forest upon the conditions of river-flow, climate and health 

 can rarely concern the private owner who is interested only 

 in the profit which he can draw from his property, and this is 

 the reason why the state, which alone is as long-lived as the 

 forest, should guard the essentials of its future welfare. The 

 questions relating to our forest are not those whose adjust- 

 ment can be deferred without detriment. Whether our cur- 

 rency be of silver or of gold, whether our tariff be high or low, 

 whether our products are carried across the sea by English 

 ships or by our own merchantmen, are matters which can be 

 decided in the future ; but whether fertile land shall be turned 

 into deserts, forests into wastes, brooks into torrents and riveis 

 changed from means of intercourse and power into forces of 

 desolation — these are questions of immediate importance 

 which must be solved at the proper time. Mr. Fernow went 

 on to show the particulars of the devastation of the French 

 Alps and of the efforts to recover them. He explained that the 

 same processes are wasting the fertility of our own territory, 

 where vast regions are doomed to impoverishment unless we 

 begin at once to arrest the loss. He advocated strongly the 

 passing of the McRae bill, now before Congress, which, 

 although crude and primitive, is, at least, a definite and rea- 

 sonable attempt at a rational forestry system tor the property 

 of the General Government. 



Dr. Rothrock, State Commissioner of Forestry, followed 

 with some well-selected lantern views illustrating the condi- 

 tions of the naked hills and water-sheds of the state. One of 

 these showed a scene in Sullivan County where ridge stretched 

 beyond ridge for miles covered with an unbroken torest, mak- 

 ing a natural sanitarium, and this was contrasted with another 

 which was a scene of absolute desolation where the hills had 

 been first lumbered over and the remaining trees destroyed 

 by fire. Two beautiful pictures from Centre County showed 

 the sources of streams in timbered regions where water was 

 saved for the state use, and two others from Clinton County 

 showed scenes of ruin, where the water had rushed off in a 



