5i8 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 303. 



Golden Dragon, but difficult to ship, because the petals inter- 

 lock badly. Ethel, white, and Mrs. H. J. Jones, yellow, are 

 desirable older varieties. 



Wellesley. Mass. T. D. Hatfield. 



Protecting Plants in Winter. 



MOST hardy plants that suffer in winter are injured by the 

 warmer open weather, Alpines that are accustomed to 

 the severest cold are often winter-killed in cultivation. This 

 comes not from the severe cold, but from alternate freezing 

 and thawing. Hardy herbaceous plants not fully established 

 are liable to be injured in the same way. When these are 

 planted in autumn a protection is quite necessary. Snow is 

 as good a covering as can be desired if it could only be re- 

 lied upon ; but it seldom stays all winter. For herbaceous 

 plants set out in autumn I find a light covering of swale-hay 

 quite satisfactory. It does not smother the plants. They are 

 frozen under it, which is good for them, and when a few days 

 of mild thawing v^'eather comes it seldom reaches or injures 

 them. Thawing in the shade or dark and thawing in the light 

 are quite different in their results upon plant-life. The latter 

 is much more injurious, but when plants are well covered they 

 are not seemingly injured if the thawing reaches them. 



When more protection than this is needed, as is the case 

 with the California bulbs, three inches of leaves under the 

 swale-hay is used. The hay is heavy, and holds the leaves in 

 place. Leaves alone will not stay, and the hay is better than 

 brush to hold them in place. For the most tender plants, 

 where all frost is to be excluded, a layer of leaves eight or ten 

 inches thick is needed under the hay. A six-inch layer would 

 suffice in most winters, but sometimes, if the leaves become 

 wet and packed together, very severe weather will penetrate 

 them. There is occasionally a plant that will not bear cover- 

 ing at all. I never succeeded in wintering Houstonia coerulea 

 under any covering but snow. 



Charlotte, Vt. 



F. H. Horsford. 



Correspondence. 



Halesia vs. Mohria vel Mohrodendron. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — The change proposed by Dr. Britton for the name ap- 

 plied to the Silver-bell-tree for 130 years past (see p. 463) is based 

 on the dictum propounded by the Botanical Club of the Ameri- 

 can Association for the Advancement of Science, at its Rochester 

 meeting in 1892. To compensate for the infinite mischief and 

 confusion which obedience to that rule will entail, there should 

 be corresponding benefits, not yet visible, and before it can be 

 accepted its validity should be beyond doubt. 



Without entering into the question whence that club derived 

 its authority to legislate, I make the point that a retrospective 

 edict like that under discussion was clearly beyond its power, 

 ultra vires. Had the club recommended that names hereafter 

 proposed, and then set aside as synonyms, should not be re- 

 vived for any other purpose, the recommendation would have 

 been worthy of consideration ; perhaps of adoption. But the 

 retrospective legislation attempted is clearly ex post facto. 



Take the case brought up by Dr. Britton. Paul Browne 

 having used the name Halesia for a Jamaica plant which 

 proved to belong to the genus Guettarda, L., it became a syno- 

 nym, a dropped name. When Ellis proposed to take it up 

 for our Silver-bell-tree, did he violate any canon 1 Surely not, 

 for none existed. When Linnaeus adopted the name in 1759, 

 did he (the father of binomial nomenclature) become a 

 law-breaker ? When successively all the writers on North 

 American botany, Walter, Marshall, Michaux, Pursh, Nuttall, 

 Torrey, Darlington, Chapman, Gray and others, continued to 

 use the name, did they also sin ? Why should they not have 

 used it ? And why should we not continue to use a name 

 which has had undisputed possession for more than a century, 

 surely long enough to plead a statute of limitation ? And what 

 is it that is now inflicting upon us "a heavy burden of syno- 

 nyms hitherto escaped"? Simply an unwise canon without 

 any validity. 



Philadelphia, Pa. John H. Redfield. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir,— As you have favored me with an opportunity of read- 

 ing Mr. Redfield's note, I venture a few remarks on the prin- 

 ciple which he disapproves. 



Mr. Redfield appears to think that because certain prac- 

 tices have been in vogue for a considerable number of years 

 no improvement upon them is possible — a proposition 

 which, in science at least, seems directly antagonistic to all 



progress. In the advance of knowledge all views and methods 

 must change, and those which were sufficient for people of 

 fifty years ago are by no means sufficient for those of to-day, 

 while those maintained to-day will, perhaps, be found unsatis- 

 factory to the scientists of the next century. Science can only 

 advance by the proposal and trial of new principles and hy- 

 potheses. 



The rejection of revertible plant-names by the botanists of 

 the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at 

 the meeting at Rochester in 1892, was unanimously agreed 

 upon as one of the necessary steps to be taken to secure an 

 approximately stable system ot nomenclature, and the posi- 

 tion then taken was not called in question at the Madison 

 meeting of last August. It is, therefore, safe to say that a great 

 majority of North American botanists have seen the necessity 

 for such a rule. It is, indeed, regarded by many as of equal or 

 even perhaps greater importance than the rule of priority of 

 publication. 



To illustrate the working of the rule, let us take the case 

 under discussion. The Linna;>an genus Guettarda is based on 

 a tree of the East Indies. Subsequently P. Browne proposed 

 Halesia as the name of a tree growing in Jamaica. Specimens 

 of the East Indian and West Indian trees are then compared 

 by some one and they are found to resemble each other, and 

 some one concludes that they are the same genus. So far, so 

 good ; but suppose another person makes the comparison and 

 concludes that they are not the same genus. Then Halesia P. 

 Browne comes to the front again as a generic name, and if 

 Halesia has been applied, as in this case, to another group of 

 plants, that must be abandoned. Now, this very thing has 

 liappened over and over again, owing to the impossibility of 

 two authors arriving at exactly the same conclusions regarding 

 the limitation of genera, and what is true of genera is even 

 more conclusively illustrated in species. 



The number of published plant-names is immensely greater 

 now than it was fifty, or even ten, years ago, and from present 

 indications it is likely to be greatly increased in the future. 

 The conditions of the present are then by no means those of 

 the past, and they demand different treatment. No one has 

 accused the older authors of law-breaking. We can only 

 regret that they could not in their time see the necessity of 

 views which are now apparent. The legislation of the botan- 

 ists of the American Association has not been effected for the 

 past, but for the present and the future. 



Columbia College, N. Y. N. L. Britton. 



Farms and Forests on the Carolina Foot-hills. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — In North Carolina cotton is not the chief crop in the 

 Piedmont country, and it does not come within the region so 

 badly gashed by torrents as that described by Mr. Meriwether 

 and referred to in your article on page 441. It is a universal 

 rule here to lay off rows for planting on horizontal lines as 

 much as possible, so as to prevent gullying, and contour 

 ditches and terraced embankments are common all over this 

 section of the state. In this region, too, much Clover and 

 Grass is grown. Not so much as there should be, however, 

 for the whole of the Piedmont belt of North Carolina, from 

 the mountains down to the borders of the coast-plain, can be 

 made an admirable grass country. 



I wish to confess, however, that the wasteful mediods of 

 timber destruction on the steep mountain-sides here are still 

 in progress. In many parts of our mountain section these 

 slopes are as fertde, if not more so, than most of the valley 

 land, and this fact is an additional danger to the great forests 

 which are too remote to make the timber available for the 

 market. There are scores of mountains here, known as 

 "Balds," which are high, prairie-like summits, from 4,000 to 

 6,000 feet above sea -level, and have always been treeless, and 

 yet on these grassy mountain-crowns one can push down a 

 walking-stick its full length in the mellow loam. 



The pasturing of cattle on these wooded mountains is an- 

 other evil which is almost as destructive as the axe. In these 

 high mountain-forests small leguminous plants added to the 

 native Grasses make pasture valuable, but in the spring and 

 early summer cattle browse on the tender buds of the under- 

 growth, and the renewal of many sorts' of trees is thus pre- 

 vented. Riding down along Valley River to its junction with 

 the Hiwassee, in Cherokee County, I have been struck with 

 the fertility of these lowlands and the enormous quantities of 

 hay stacked in the fields, and yet no cattle can be seen except 

 an occasional milch-cow. All the stock is herded on the high 

 mountains, and never comes down until the fall, when it 

 is fed for the southern market. There is no lack of grass 



