December 30, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



521 



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 l'OST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — Forestry in Pennsylvania 521 



Fertile Crosses of Teosfnthe and Maize Dr. J: W. Harskberger. 522 



Landscape Effects at Kew. (Willi figure.) .IV. \V. 523 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson, 524 



Cultural Department : — Tomatoes Under Glass IV. E. Britton. 526 



Begonias Robert Cameron. 527 



Orchid Notes William Magee, Jr. 527 



Cypripedium bellatulum E. O. Orpet. 528 



Correspondence :— Cooperation in Flower-growing ...T.D. Hatfield. 529 



R ecent Publications 529 



Notes 530 



1 li ustration : — View in the Royal Gardens, Kew, Fig. 75 525 



Forestry in Pennsylvania. 



THE publication of the Report of the Forestry Com- 

 mission of Pennsylvania, being the second part 

 of the Report of the Department of Agriculture for 

 1895, marks the first serious attempt of a study of 

 the forestry question in Pennsylvania. Whatever has 

 been done previous to this was not only very frag- 

 mentary and partial, but was also local. Here, however, 

 we have the first report of a commission appointed in 

 May, 1893, and sent to the Legislature on the 15th of March, 

 1895. The long delay in publication is presumably not 

 intentional, but is due to the chronic condition in printing 

 state documents, joined to the disastrous fire of over a year 

 ago, the effects of which have not yet been overcome. It 

 is not to be supposed that less than two years would give 

 an exhaustive and complete report of so wide and diversi- 

 fied a state as Pennsylvania, with its sixty-seven counties 

 and 45,000 square miles of area. Nevertheless, we have 

 the beginning of a personal canvass of that portion best 

 fitted for forestry purposes ; the results of a number of 

 special inquiries ; lists of the trees native to the state, with 

 ample and instructive notes on their character and their 

 economic value and hints as to their propagation, and a 

 very suggestive summing up of forestry prospects, together 

 with recommendations for future policy and effort. 



It appears that the so-called forest lands comprise a little 

 less thirty-three per cent, of the state, ranging from about 

 six per cent, in Bucks County to ninety-two in Pike County. 

 But these, as it is truly said, should rather be called waste 

 than forest lands, since they have been in large part cut 

 over, and in many cases are now totally unproductive. 

 This fact is very forcibly brought out by a table of the 

 lands advertised to be sold for taxes during the year 1894. 

 They comprised 2,358 square miles, or about five per cent, 

 of the entire state. They were located in thirty-one of the 

 sixty-seven counties, and varied from a few acres in some 

 to 190,000 in McKean County ; comprising, in this latter 

 case, twenty -nine and five-tenths per cent, of the area of the 

 whole county. More or less field-work was done over 

 nearly half the state, the most attention being given to the 

 more mountainous districts and those most closely related 



to the Delaware and Susquehanna watersheds. It is unfor- 

 tunate that the time set for the completion of the report did 

 not permit more work of this character, for in no other 

 way can the facts necessary for the proper stating and solu- 

 tion of the problem be obtained. We hope, however, that 

 this may be done in the near future, since a permanent 

 office of forestry commissioner has now been established. 



Six tracts, ranging from 200 to 2,000 square miles, are 

 defined as of such nature that they are lifted for forest 

 reserves. The}' are quite irregular in outline, and each 

 comprises parts of several counties. The Pocono tract, in 

 the north-east, as the source of the Lehigh and other waters 

 draining into the Delaware, and the Lycoming tract, far- 

 ther west, the source of the bulk of the water of the west 

 branch of the Susquehanna, are specially recommended for 

 this purpose, not only because of their influence on the 

 water-supply, but also because they are unfitted for other 

 profitable use. It is shown that tree-growth is here pro- 

 fuse and recuperation rapid, so that if adequate protection 

 could be afforded reforesting would not be a difficult matter. 

 It is to be hoped that this recommendation may receive due 

 consideration and the commissioner may be authorized to 

 perfect a plan for securing the control and providing for 

 the management of these Reserves. The danger from fires, 

 while frequently mentioned, and the subject of one or two 

 special inquiries, has not, relatively, the space allotted to it 

 that is often given. Presumably this is because no new 

 facts have been discovered in relation to the cause or pre- 

 vention of these disasters, and it is not worth while to be 

 threshing old straw. 



A letter, called "A practical man's experience in timber 

 restoration," gives a concrete illustration of the difficulties 

 that beset efforts to manage a forest property upon 

 common-sense business principles, "owing to the poverty, 

 ignorance, stupidity and crime of the people about it.'' 

 These people resented efforts in forest restoration as an 

 affront to their vested rights of hunting, berry-picking and 

 pasturing, so that after several years of labor the man who 

 bought 1,200 acres of woodland for the purpose of saving 

 the timber and demonstrating what can be done to 

 develop forest-growth has nothing to show except a 

 heavy bill of expense. He summarizes the whole 

 situation, not only for his case, but for the whole state, 

 by saying, "if the laws could be so amended as to give 

 the landowner proprietary rights in whatever his land 

 produced, whether it be trees, grass, herbs, birds or fishes, 

 and inflict heavy penalties and give damages, . . . then 

 all sorts of trespasses would be quite rare, and in time we 

 might hope to see a decent growth of timber over the thou- 

 sands of square miles of what is now desert and waste 

 land." We must confess that we do not share the cheerful 

 optimism of this philanthropic citizen, for it ought to be 

 understood that he did not undertake this work so much 

 with the personal expectation of personal profit as to give 

 an object-lesson in forestry for the example of others. Laws 

 will not enforce themselves, and unless there is an educated 

 public opinion behind them they are worse than a dead 

 letter on the books. It appears that this man complained 

 to justices, to district attorneys and to county detectives, 

 but received no help. Of course, it was unfortunate that 

 there was no Justice of the Peace for twenty miles in any 

 direction, but the chief trouble is that courts and juries 

 prefer the old ways and will not consider it an offense or 

 a crime if their neighbors do only what has been the habit 

 of the country from time immemorial. 



Forty-seven full-page plates illustrate the report andshow 

 some characteristic trees and forest views ; they also 

 show by contrast what we have and what we might 

 have, in an exceedingly instructive way. It should be 

 added that Dr. J. T. Rothrock, to whom the bulk of this 

 report is due, is now the Commissioner of Forestry of the 

 state, and has been untiring in his labors for the forestry 

 cause. In the farmers' institutes and at other gatherings 

 he has continued to give illustrated lectures upon tin' 

 subject. These have proved very popular, and the 



