May 17, 1893. J 



Garden and Forest. 



213 



small nourishment, and those that lie where they have fallen, 

 hollow and dead of old age, are no larger. But the wood is of 

 good height, and not a coppice growth. The trees are almost 

 all Chestnuts, with rugged moss-grown trunks. 



As you look carefully to your footsteps on the rough and 

 slippery path, you are suddenly aware, upon your left, of a 

 black cavern among the boulders, large enough to admit the 

 bodyof aman. Huge rocks are piled around and above it, shame- 

 fully disfigured with the names of those who have visited the 

 spot, but there the little opening shows the scene of the gallant 

 deed of the young farmer, who alone, torch in hand, explored 

 its narrow recesses and shot the old she wolf in her lair 

 (see p. 217). The wolf-den is said to be not more than thirty- 

 five or forty feet deep, though it merges into a narrow winding 

 passage that, descending sharply, is believed to penetrate into 

 the heart of the hill. It is a tight squeeze for a man to enter 

 the cavern, and I have never seen any one penetrate more 

 than a few feet into its slimy recesses; but it is said to slope 

 downward at a sharp angle, so that a careful explorer may ad- 

 vance thence on hands and knees. Ten or twenty feet further 

 on the passage makes a bend and opens into a chamber fifteen 

 feet or more in diameter, the ceiling not more than four feet 

 high ; this was the lair of the historic wolf. These propor- 

 tions are possibly traditional, for 1 never knew of any one but 

 a small boy entering, who, dismayed at the report that rat- 

 tlesnakes were the present denizens of that grewsome abode, 

 promptly retired without much definite information. It is proba- 

 ble that the whole opening has settled since Putnam's time, so 

 that penetrating the cave would now be more difficult than 

 ever ; but when the authorities are fairly in possession it may 

 be that some excavation of this subterraneous chamber 

 will be attempted, and make it possible for youthful visitors 

 to see for themselves the den where Putnam fired at the glar- 

 ing eyeballs of the enemy nearly one hundred and seventy-five 

 years ago. The reverberation of his gun in the cavern deaf- 

 ened him completely in one ear, and in his later life he became 

 almost totally deaf. 



Very old trees are growing out of the rocks above the cav- 

 ern, where the harsh and stony soil limits their development, 

 and all around spring Ferns and Mosses and wild-growing 

 things that would make the spot charming, but for the hide- 

 ous disfigurement of the painted names which hopelessly vul- 

 garize the scene. Thefirst duty of the Park Commissioners who 

 are appomted will be to prohibit such desecration of the place, 

 and they will, of course, do their best to efface these evidences 

 of barbarism. It is proposed to lay out gravel walks and to 

 remove the underbrush in the enclosure, but it is to be hoped 

 that the latter process will be performed with great care, for in 

 a long, undisturbed forest of this kind, any meddling with ex- 

 isting conditions, other than to remove the dead growth, might 

 result in serious detriment to the trees. The woodland under- 

 growth is necessary to the well-being of old trees, and its re- 

 moval helps to rob the roots of moisture and admits too much 

 air and sun upon the unaccustomed trunks. A better path 

 might well be made, but it will be a pity to interfere with the 

 picturesque wildness of the place more than is absolutely ne- 

 cessary. What is of most importance is to purchase as much 

 of the wild woodland in the neighborhood as the appropria- 

 tion made by the state will admit of, and to preserve it intact, 

 that the beauty of the hill, with its historic cavern, may be per- 

 petually maintained. 



Already the fine woods, which have been one of the charms 

 of Pomfret, are failing to meet the demand for lumber, and the 

 older inhabitants hear with a pang the echo of the axe telling 

 of the ruin to come, when their mantle of green is stripped 

 from these windy hills. It has been with terror that the lovers 

 of the spot have listened to the approaching axe and feared that 

 even this historic spot would not be spared. Fortunately, the old 

 boulders about the den, clothed to their shaggy tops with ver- 

 dure and overhung with ancient Chestnuts, cannot be 

 destroyed, and they will be associated forever with that pictur- 

 esque figure in history, who, from the slaying of the wolf, con- 

 tinued to be a doer of gallant deeds. Whether leaving his 

 plow in the field to gallop to the Lexington fight, or sharing 

 with Prescott the honors of Bunker Hill battle, or galloping 

 down the hundred steps of Break-neck Hill, with British bul- 

 ets flying through his hat, and British soldiers admiring his 

 plucky ride for life and freedom, Israel Putnam is always a 

 spirited figure in the historic page, a gallant fighter, a sturdy 

 patriot, a prompt and decisive actor in every good cause. 



His lineal descendants still till the Pomfret soil and preserve 

 the traditions of the race with cheerful courage and ready help- 

 fulness. To them, as to the whole town, it is a cause of 

 rejoicing that the old wolf-den will be forever guarded from 

 destructive hands, and made an object of honor to the state and 



a perpetual lesson to its children who shall come hither to 

 learn at the scene of his boyish exploit, the story of the old 

 patriot general of the Revolution. 



Hingham, Mass. 



M. C. Rob bins. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — XIII. 



THE Japanese form of the Old World Mountain Ash, 

 Pyrus aucuparia, is a common tree in Yezo and on 

 all the high mountain-ranges of Hondo, where it is some- 

 times tw^enty or thirty feet in height, and always conspicu- 

 ous in autumn from the brilliant orange and scarlet colors 

 of the foliage. This peculiarity will give to this tree a horti- 

 cultural value, although, except in its mostly glabrous buds, 

 it does not vary in any marked way from the Mountain 

 Ash of. Europe and northern Asia. 



Pyrus sambucifolia, which is much like the American 

 plant, although described as a small shrub, is said to be 

 abundant in northern and eastern Yezo and on the Kurile 

 Islands. I only saw it in the botanic garden at Sapparo, 

 where Professor Miyabe has established a remarkable col- 

 lection of Hokkaido plants. The third Japanese Mountain 

 Ash, Pyrus gracilis, is, I believe, unknown in cultivation ; 

 it is a particularly well-marked species with woolly buds, 

 leaves only four or five inches long with oval or oblong 

 leaflets rounded or acute at the apex, and pale on the lower 

 surface, orbicular, incisely serrate stipules an inch or more 

 across, minute flowers in small few-flowered clusters, and 

 oblong fruit barely an eighth of an inch long. Pyrus gra- 

 cilis inhabits mountain-forests in KyGshii and in central 

 Hondo, where, however, I looked for it in vain. 



Aria is represented in Japan by two handsome trees, the 

 first, Pyrus lanata * (I follow Hooker in the Flora 0/ British 

 India in referring the Japanese plant to the Pyrus lanata of 

 Don, which grows also on the Himalayas from Cashmere 

 to Kumaon), is not rare in central Japan, where it is prin- 

 cipally found at about 5,000 feet elevation above the sea- 

 level on the lower edge of the great Hemlock-forest. Here 

 it is a tree thirty or forty feet in height, with a trunk six to 

 eight inches in diameter, slender light red branchlets 

 marked with white dots and oblong obtuse winter-buds 

 covered with pale chestnut-colored imbricated scales. The 

 leaves are three or four inches long, two or three inches 

 wide, broadly oblong to ovate-lanceolate, acute at the 

 apex, slightly lobulate and serrate, dark green and mostly 

 glabrous on the upper surface, and silver-white and more 

 or less thickly coated with tomentum on the lower. The 

 flowers I have not seen, but the fruit is subglobose to ob- 

 long, one-third of an inch long, bright scarlet and marked 

 with pale lenticels. The second Japanese species of Aria 

 is a tree fifty or sixty feet in height, with a trunk covered 

 with pale smooth bark, and occasionally a foot and a half 

 in diameter, slender branches, which form a narrow oblong 

 head, and red branchlets marked by oblong lenticular dots. 

 The leaves are ovate, acute, often long-pointed at the apex, 

 rounded or sometimes wedge-shaped at the base, serrate, with 

 incurved teeth, or often coarsely and doubly serrate above 

 the middle, thin, or subcoriaceous at maturity, dark green 

 on the upper surface, pale on the lower, two or three 

 inches long and one or two inches broad, with thick promi- 

 nent midribs, straight parallel veins and slender petioles 

 one or two inches in length. The flowers, which appear 

 near Sapparo early in June, are borne in loose spreading 

 long-branched, few-flowered corymbs, and are half an inch 

 in diameter. The calyx-lobes are ovate, acute, densely 

 coated on the inner surface with thick white tomentum, 

 and much shorter than the oblong white petals rounded at 

 the apex and contracted at the base into short claws more 

 or less covered with tufts of long white hairs. The sta- 

 mens are exserted, with filiform filaments enlarged at the 

 base, and rather longer than the two spreading styles. The 

 fruit ripens in September, and is oblong or subglobose, the 

 size of a pea, light red, and conspicuously marked by the 



* Pyrus lanata, Don, Prodr. Fl. Nepal. 237 (1802I.— Hooker f., Fl. Brit. Ind., ii.,375. 

 Soibus Aria, var. Kamaonensis, Ma.ximowicz, Mifl. Biol., ii., 173 (1873). 

 Sorbus lanata, Wenzig, Linnaa, xxxviii., 61 (1874). 



