3i8 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 283. 



Grape-vines should have been stopped before this time. 

 Laterals may be pinched in to help the fruit and make firmer 

 wood for pruning next year. 



Wellesley, Mass. T. D. Hatfield. 



Strawberries.— It is unfortunate that among so many new 

 varieties of Strawberries introduced yearly, so few prove of 

 value enough to become generally cultivated. This may be 

 owing, in a measure, to love of change, for some of the older 

 varieties, mostly out of cultivation, were as good as any 

 now grown. Sir Charles Napier, Jucunda, TroUope's Vic- 

 toria, and Walker's Seedling are now seldom, if ever seen. 

 Too often Strawberries are allowed to run wild on poor 

 ground, receiving no fair test. They need good, rich, fresh, 

 well-tilled ground, and whenever autumn planting is prac- 

 ticed the runners should be cut off, thus concentrating all the 

 energies of the plants into making crowns for next season's 

 planting. Sharpless is our stand-by. Hovey's Seedling, once 

 a splendid sort, is losing constitution and will have to be 

 discarded. I hope to replace it by a new pistillate seedling, 

 Hovey's X Sharpless. Of many new kinds tried last year, 

 we do not find any of sufficient merit to grow again, except 

 Michel's Early, and for its earliness alone. Yates and 

 Crawford proved to be fine-flavored berries, but sadly 

 lacked productiveness. Beverley is likely to prove a useful 

 market variety. Eureka is a heavy cropper, but the ber- 

 ries soon dwindle in size. The Gandy is a heavy cropper, of 

 splendid constitution, and likely to hold its own on that ac- 

 count, but lacks the proper flavor. I have also tried several 

 new and old English and French varieties with poor success. 

 There is a luscious pine flavor among these unapproachable 

 by native varieties. Triomphe de Gand will not grow, nor will 

 Auguste Nicaise, Noble, A. F. Barron, Keen's Seedling, or 

 Elton Pine. I should be glad to learn of the experience of 

 others with any of these varieties. 



Wellesley, Mass. T. D. H. 



Correspondence. 



The Annual Forest-fires. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — The fires are running again. The air is full of smoke. 

 The following clipping expresses the condition in this region 

 very well : "We are helpless, except so far as our own hands 

 and legs can help. After that, we must depend on the spon- 

 taneous good-will of neighbors." 



No one is prevented by any power of Government or fear of 

 legal punishment from setting a fire in the woods or on the 

 prairie whenever he may choose. The result is that fully 

 twenty per cent, of the Pine, Cedar and Tamarack timber ma- 

 tured in this state, and probably sixty per cent, of the hard- 

 wood, has been destroyed by fire, while the chance for land 

 once cut over to reclothe itself with timber is so small that I 

 think it safe to say that nine-tenths of all land once cut over 

 has been swept by fire severe enough to destroy the seedlings 

 and saplings left from the cutting. 



The season of the spring fires here begins as soon as the 

 snow is off, and continues until the leaves are fully out, some- 

 times until the middle of June. During this time we are to 

 expect in passing along every line of railroad through a wooded 

 section a stifling smoke and a blackened country with fires 

 creeping through brush, rushing over meadows or crackling 

 and roaring through the timber. As we see so much of this, 

 and yet hear no complaint, we are apt to think no damage is 

 being done. Lumbermen bear their losses quietly, and most 

 of the people living in the woods are too ignorant to under- 

 stand or too listless to care for the loss incurred, not so much 

 by themselves as by the county and the state. 



The settlers coming into the country to take up land and 

 clear farms form the idea that this fire is Nature's glorious and 

 beneficent way of subduing the wild character of the forest for 

 the onward march of civilization. Enthusiasdc, impatient of 

 obstacles, daring, to them fire running wild is a congenial 

 spectacle. The pioneer has the spirit of war. He comes as a 

 conqueror of these woody giants that must be rooted out be- 

 fore the land can be cultivated and dotted with productive 

 farms — that is, if the land happens to be adapted to agricul- 

 ture. It takes a life-time for a poor man to make a clearing. 

 His children, growing in the meantime, become imbued with 

 this spirit of war upon the trees. The first man-like delight of 

 one of these boys is to take his father's axe and chop down a 

 tree, and the weird sight of the fires in a clearing often fully 

 satisfies the longing to see the fireworks described in the coun- 



try paper about the loth of July. He also shares with the In- 

 dian boy the temptation to touch a match to every brush-pile 

 or bunch of dry grass, and this desire ofjten clings to him 

 through life. ' '-C 



The neighbors who come and settle near have not the 

 originality of the first settler and usually follow his example, 

 though with less intelligence, not knowing so well when fire 

 will spread, nor realizing what damage will be done. They 

 slash and burn and are surprised to find that the little fire they 

 have kindled in their brush-heaps has spread to the Pine- 

 woods miles away, and is now leaping through the tree-tops, 

 destroying thousands upon thousands of feet of marketable 

 timber. 



In caring for the forests, prevention of fire is of first impor- 

 tance. I venture to say that this cannot be done if the matter 

 is left to the people directly, for local organizations and local 

 officers are too much under local influence, and the popular 

 sense of duty on this question is not well enough developed 

 to be reliable. 



The inhabitants of towns and cities, as well as those of the 

 woods, are concerned in this problem so important to thefuture 

 resources of the country, and it is the duty of every cifizen to 

 help in the effort to control these fires. No one, in a region 

 like this, should be allowed to kindle a fire for even a good 

 purpose, either in forest or prairie, without notifying his neigh- 

 bors, and even then he should be compelled to show a per- 

 mit from some legal authority. Who shall that authority be, 

 to secure intelligent, disinterested and just action? In some 

 places these judges might be, for the present at least, officers 

 in the army of the United States, as suggested by Garden and 

 Forest, and each officer should have charge of, say, ten men 

 to look after an area of not more than 200 square miles. Ele- 

 vated lookout stafions could be established with telephone 

 connection, and when the smoke of a fire is seen it should be 

 put out and accounted for. 



If officers and soldiers of the regular army or of the state mili- 

 tia cannot be detailed for this service, some permanent guards 

 should be provided for our forests, and at times when fires do 

 not threaten the men could make roads, keeping a strip bare 

 at intervals as a check to the flames. Or they could patrol 

 against trespassing, help make maps, or do other duty. Offi- 

 cers in charge of such work would have opportunities for 

 studying the forest, its capacities and needs, and their reports 

 would have a value in deciding what should be the per- 

 manent forest-policy of the country. 



Carlton, Minn. H. B. Ayres. 



The Mountaijii Maple. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I was glad to see in a recent number of your journal a 

 plea for the more general cultivation of our beautiful small 

 nafive Maple, Acer spicatum. I had just been forcibly struck 

 with its attractiveness, as it grows wild along the edges of the 

 woodland-roads in this region. Even here it often assumes 

 an admirably compact and symmetrical shape. Toward the 

 end of June, when its many racemes of delicate pinkish brown 

 flowers rise above its drooping leaves it is decidedly the most 

 ornamental object one meets with, and now that the flowers 

 have been replaced by clusters of brighter-colored fruit it is 

 equally charming. Even amid the most gorgeous flowering 

 shrubs of the garden it would hold its own in beauty, while its 

 individuality might be even more apparent than in the forest. 

 The very fact that its profusely produced flowers are not 

 brightly colored would assist its usefulness to the gardener, 

 who often wants, or should want, some delicate, rather dullish 

 notes to mingle with the greens and the brighter floral notes of 

 his shrubberies ; or wants a flowering plant of distinct, yet 

 somewhat modest, aspect for some situation where a gayer 

 one would be inharmonious. Truly, in habit, in foliage and 

 in general color-effect few shrubs are more attractive than 

 Acer spicatum, and none with which we are more familiar in 

 cuUivation can quite fill its place. 

 Lake Placid, N. Y. M. G. V. R. 



War upon Caterpillars. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — A praiseworthy effort has been made this year inHing- 

 ham, Massachusetts, to check the spread of the web-caterpil- 

 lar by a bounty offered by the Agricultural Society to the col- 

 lector of the largest number of caterpillar belts, in addifion to 

 a dollar a thousand for these nests. Seventy-five children en- 

 gaged in this enterprise and the result was a total of over sixty- 

 eight thousand belts gathered by them, which represents the 



