November i, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



451 



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 POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER i, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article: — Lumbering and Forestry 451 



Tlie Botanical Aspect of Pike's Peak Dr. V. Havard, U.S.A. 452 



A Naturally Grown Chrysanthemum, Florence Percy. (With figure.) 



/-K. IViitson. 453 



October in a West Virginia Garden Danske Dandridge. 453 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 454 



New or Little-known Plants: — Orchid Notes W. 455 



Cultural Department : — Early Deciduous Shrubs J. G. Jack. 455 



Garden Notes J. N. Gerard. 457 



Autumn Work E. O. Orpet. 457 



Correspondence : — The Best Lilacs A. M. Eaton. 457 



The Pinetum at West Chester, Pennsylvania 5. 458 



Sulphuric Acid and Water L. C. Flannagan. 459 



Thb Columbian Exposition : — Gardening about State and Government Build- 

 ings Professor L. H. Bailey. 459 



Notes 460 



Illustration: — Chrysanthemum, Florence Percy — naturally grown, Fig. 67.... 456 



Lumbering and Forestry. 



NO doubt it is true that, in the long run, the interests 

 of the forester and of the lumberman are identical. 

 The good people who look on lumbermen as public ene- 

 mies because they cut down trees, should remember that 

 the most conservative and scientific forestry has the same 

 end in view ; that is, the purpose of good forestry is not to 

 save trees, but to cut them and use every one. The real 

 case of the people against the lumberman is not that he cuts 

 down trees to use them, but that he cuts extravagantly and 

 destroys more than he uses. At the recent covention in 

 Chicago, Mr. J. E. Defebaugh, editor of The Timberman, 

 argued that, so long as the present conditions continue, the 

 destruction of the forest is inevitable, and any policy of 

 forest-preservation impossible. The argument is, that no 

 nation can husband its chief resource. The United States 

 exports wheat because it is possible to raise cheap wheat 

 from virgin soils by robbing them of their fertility. Wheat 

 would be no longer one of our principal resources, and we 

 could not export a bushel, if the western growers were re- 

 quired to raise their wheat under an advanced system of 

 husbandry which maintained the strength of the soil by 

 using fertilizers. So with our forest-products. They are a 

 leading resource because we can get them cheaply by 

 wasteful methods. If we were compelled to practice the 

 refinements of forestry, and keep in view the constant re- 

 production of the best timber, forest-products would no 

 longer be cheap and articles of large export. In this view 

 of the case, so long as timber-cutting and timber-selling are 

 left to be controlled by ordinary financial considerations, 

 we can expect no wise and far-sighted forest-policy until 

 our forest-area is reduced and becomes small in proportion 

 to our population. The only way to establish any system 

 of forestry before the original forest is mainly cut away is 

 to interest the entire people, so that, with due regard to in- 

 dividual rights, the forest-policy of the country should 

 some how be under Government control. 



There is a truth at the bottom of this somewhat discour- 



aging view, but, even if it is accepted, we should remember 

 that after all it is possible for lumbermen, with little expense, 

 to adopt less wasteful methods, and it is possible, too, for 

 the law to interfere and check some of our extravagant 

 methods of cutting before the time is ripe for the state to 

 take in charge the administration of our forest-property. 

 Besides this, as Mr. Fernow pointed out at the same meet- 

 ing, the time has already arrived, or, at least, it cannot be 

 far distant, when timber-lands will be an inviting invest- 

 ment for those who wish to keep their forests for permanent 

 cropping. He does not suggest the planting of forests from 

 which the first returns are distant from thirty to a hundred 

 years, although tree-planting by no means ought to be 

 discouraged on the forestless prairies and in the plains 

 country. Nor does he advocate the purchase of culled 

 pieces of woodland from which the valuable timber has 

 already been cut. But, inasmuch as it is possible, even 

 now, to buy well-stocked virgin forest-lands which already 

 contain a full-grown crop, half of which is valuable and 

 accessible to large markets, for from $5.00 to $10.00 an 

 acre, the more rational method would be to take this ready- 

 made crop and apply to it systematic forestry. As the 

 country has grown richer the rates of interest have de- 

 clined, and if Government bonds, on account of their safety 

 and the ease with which the interest is collected, bring less 

 than four per cent., the compounding of interest on forest- 

 property, which is safe and increasing in value, may justify 

 us in making our estimates at a still lower figure. The 

 investor in such timber-lands can at will draw interest, and 

 he can anticipate it by taking advantage of favorable mar- 

 ket conditions, and he can still have an investment capable 

 of increasing its yield partly hj the increased product 

 under good management, and partly on account of increased 

 price for this product. To enforce this view, Mr. Fernow 

 states that during the last forty years the price of wood has 

 increased in Germany at the rate of from one and a half to 

 nearly three per cent, a year. In Prussia the price nearly 

 doubled from the years 1830 to 1865, while between 1850 

 to 1 891 it rose from three cents to nearly five cents a cubic 

 foot for wood of all kinds and sizes. And since our virgin 

 forest-supplies are being consumed at a rate which exceeds 

 twice the capacity of the existing area to produce it, thrifty 

 growing timber must surely increase in value. For long 

 investments, therefore, timber-lands, under good forest- 

 management, may even now be considered as equally 

 profitable in the long run to timber-lands which are bought 

 for the purpose of culling out all that is good and leaving 

 the forest in a worse condition than it was before. 



As for the waste of our ordinary lumbering methods, we 

 have already said that, perhaps, when lumbermen learn 

 more about the advantages of forestry, they will try to im- 

 prove their practice. With regard, however, to the great 

 sin against forestry — namely, forest-fires, which one would 

 think affected the lumberman more directly than any one 

 else — he seems to have a supreme indifference. Another 

 speaker at this same meeting, Mr. Saley, editor of the 

 North-western Lumberman, states that in the White Pine ter- 

 ritory, where fires are most destructive, not only to tim- 

 ber, but to settlements and human life, he has only known 

 one operator to burn his debris under supervision, and thus 

 protect his own property and that of his neighbors. Very 

 often the operator cares for no protection himself because 

 he has cut every stick of timber on his own ground, and he 

 has laid a train which must sooner or later be fired, to the 

 danger of the timber which stands alongside of his boun- 

 daries and belongs to his neighbor. Then follows a pas- 

 sage, which we quote entire : 



Here comes the legal aspect of the case, and it is surprising 

 that the courts have not been asked to give their opinion re- 

 garding it. In common law, if a man desires to pile, without 

 protection, combustible material on his lot adjoining the one 

 on which his neighbor's hotise stands, he may do so, but he 

 will be held accountable in case of damage for such losses as 

 might naturally result from his negligence. If an operator 

 permits the leavings of a logging job to collect and dry along- 

 side the timber of another man, there is little question but in 



