462 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 456. 



field. If it is desirable to keep bad statues and other so- 

 called works of art out of our cities and to prevent the 

 erection of good ones in inappropriate places.it is certainly 

 more important to prevent the erection of ugly and incon- 

 venient public buildings such as school-houses, court-houses 

 and public libraries, and ugly and badly constructed 

 bridges and other structures paid for by the public. The 

 town of Brookline, in Massachusetts, at least believes that 

 it is feasible to improve the appearance and character 

 of her public buildings by the use of artistic advisers, and 

 by a by-law recently adopted by the town and approved 

 by the court, it becomes the duty of the selectmen to 

 appoint a committee to whom the plans of all public build- 

 ings and other structures paid for by the citizens are to be 

 submitted for approval or rejection. This plan seems to 

 be a real step forward in artistic progress, and the results 

 of the experiment made by this small community will be 

 watched with interest everywhere. 



Since the dry weather in early spring there has been 

 abundant moisture in this vicinity all summer through, 

 and the grass in lawns and pastures never grew more 

 sturdily; nevertheless, we have rarely seen so many bare 

 spaces in the turf of our city parks or suburban lawns as 

 there have been during the present autumn. There may 

 be many causes for this. It is certain that the Crab-grass 

 has been unusually aggressive, and so have certain annual 

 grasses and weeds, and after they have died down and 

 turned black the natural conclusion is that they have 

 killed the lawn grasses and left the ground bare. But it is 

 clear that the trouble in many cases is deeper than this. 

 There are places where the brown sod can be rolled up 

 like a carpet and the dead grass can be pulled out by the 

 handful, like the hair from an animal when it is shedding 

 its coat. This indicates that some enemy has destroyed 

 the roots of the grass, a devastation largely accomplished 

 by cut-worms of several kinds and the larvae of different 

 insects. After these insects destroy the good grass, some 

 annual grass, like Panicum sanguinale, takes hold, but the 

 damage is done before the foul grass intrudes. One who 

 watches these bare patches may now and then see a flicker 

 boring into the ground, and in some cases these birds have 

 been driven away as the supposed destroyers of the grass. 

 Their presence, however, proves that the real enemies are 

 certain grubs upon which they feed. The difficulty is not 

 an easy one to remedy, and it is so serious that we have 

 asked Professor Smith, Entomologist of the New jersey 

 Experiment Station, to give some account of the enemies 

 which prey upon lawns and pastures, and the first part ot 

 his paper appears on another page of this issue." The arti- 

 cle was not prepared for specialists, but it is written in such 

 a way that every reader will be able to identify these pests 

 and know how to apply the remedies so far as any effective 

 ones have been devised. 



Conifers on the Grounds of the Kansas Agricultural 

 College. — II. 



THE White Pine, Pinus Strobus, has not, on the whole, 

 proved a success. While it is unquestionably the 

 most beautiful of the Pines that have been tried here, and 

 while it will often grow well for a number of years, it does 

 not seem able to endure the vicissitudes of the Kansas 

 climate, and eventually dies. The oldest specimens on 

 the College grounds at present are eleven trees on the 

 south side of the lower farm. The soil is here a clay 

 loam of about twelve inches in depth, underlaid by a red- 

 dish clay subsoil. These trees were sent here in 1886, being 

 then about four years old At present they seem to be in 

 a vigorous condition, and during the season of 1896 have 

 made a growth from the terminal shoot of from 16 to 30 

 inches. They give the following average measurement : 

 Height, 16^ feet; diameter at the ground, 6 inches; at 2 

 feet, 4 Vz inches, and at 6 feet, 3 inches. The largest tree 



in the group measures 2 2 j £ feet high, with a diameter at the 

 ground of 8 inches, and at 2 feet of 6 1 /-> inches. In the 

 yard of a private house just east of the College grounds 

 stands the oldest White Pine in this vicinity. Professor 

 Mason says of it in a paper read in 1888 : "A White Pine 

 in Professor Gale's grounds, planted in 1875, and now ap- 

 parently seventeen or eighteen years old, is 26 feet high, 9 

 inches in diameter at the ground, and 6 inches at 6 feet. 

 It is perfectly straight, and the handsomest tree of all that 

 I have measured.'' At present this tree gives the following 

 measurements: "Height, 32J2 feet; diameter at the 

 ground, i3 : _; inches ; at 2 feet, 11 inches, and at 6 feet, 9 

 inches, an increase in seven years of 6]/, feet in height, 

 and 4j/§ inches in diameter at the ground. But the top is 

 dead, and the whole tree shows evidence of decline. The 

 death of some of the White Pines on the College grounds 

 might be attributed to unfavorable location, but this one is 

 as favorably situated as it could possibly be. 



The Table Mountain Pine, Pinus pungens, is perfectly 

 hardy here, and for ornamental planting on a large tract, 

 where a striking, picturesque effect is desired, it is not to be 

 surpassed, but it would seem to be too crooked to be valua- 

 ble as timber trees, and its growth is slow as compared 

 with the Scotch and Austrian Pines. 



The Dwarf Pine, Pinus pumilis, has been planted in con- 

 siderable numbers for ornamental purposes, and is certainly 

 admirable for that use where a low-growing evergreen is 

 desired. It is perfectly hardy and grows very slowly. 

 Two specimens in front of Horticultural Hall are now, 

 as nearly as can be ascertained, nineteen years old, and 

 measure 8 feet in height, with a spread of 12 feet. It is a 

 tree which not only grows on very poor soil, but is very 

 easily transplanted. The Pitch Pine, P. rigida, is also per- 

 fectly hardy and forms a good straight trunk, but it grows 

 too slowly to be profitable here. 



Agricultural Colli ■ ■, Manhattan, Kan. 



R. C. Sears. 



Notes on a Trip> to the Dismal Swamp. 



THE large tract of inundated lowland in south-eastern 

 Virginia known as the Dismal Swamp possesses an 

 interest to workers in all branches of science from the fact 

 that it is the first or most northern great series of coastal 

 swamps extending from Norfolk southward for many miles. 

 To the botanist such an area furnishes valuable opportuni- 

 ties for the study of geographical distribution and of habitat, 

 and mainly with this object in view I made the expedition 

 to the swamp last May in company with a geologist and 

 two ornithologists. The accompanying notes on the flora 

 of the region are the outcome of only two days' sojourn in 

 the swamp itself. 



In man}' parts of the area under consideration the term 

 "dismal" is a misnomer, as the trees are not of sufficient 

 size and density to exclude the sunlight altogether, or even 

 to give that appearance of gloom afforded by the coniferous 

 forests of the north. In the interior, however, especially 

 around Lake Drummond, certain trees, such as Acer 

 rubrum, Nyssa biflora, etc., attain a verj' great height. 

 The majority of the remaining trees, like Magnolia 

 glauca and Quercus nigra, do not exceed, for the most 

 part, twenty or thirty feet. The last two species, in 

 company with several ericaceous shrubs and the Hol- 

 lies, Ilex glabra and I. opaca, when intertwined with the 

 numerous woody vines that abound in the swamp, consti- 

 tute an impenetrable jungle which defies even superficial 

 investigation unless exploring botanists are armed with 

 bush knives. While paddling up the Jericho Canal from 

 Suffolk in a dug-out we noted several well-marked areas in 

 which some one of these dominant species seemed to 

 llourish at the expense of the others. Along the side of 

 the canal for the first few miles, soil thrown out in the con- 

 struction of the ditch forms a moderately firm bank, along 

 which is a good towpath. Here the Cane grows rather 

 sparsely, but there are numerous trees apparently not 

 found in the interior, notably Aralia spinosa, Sassafras 



