532 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 305. 



motif, and add such details from year to year as the grow- 

 ing- picture itself suggests new combinations. Time spent 

 in such study is time most delightfully spent, for ideas can 

 be sought ill every walk through the grassy path of a 

 woodland; every neglected roadside contains its lesson; 

 every river-bank along which he may drift affords a hint 

 for new combinations, and the whole world becomes a 

 sketch-book full of designs by the greatest of artists, which 

 he may adopt and adapt without charge of plagiarism. 

 Nature is bountiful in prospects, bountiful in material for 

 making them. Supreme as she is, man is her ruler, and, 

 without him, her highest charm lacks significance, since 

 his is the eye to see, and, therefore, it is his right to subject 

 her to his fancy, and he seldom has more delightful em- 

 ployment than in producing harmony between her munifi- 

 cence and his own artistic needs. 



A BROAD avenue, several miles long, has just been 

 graded through the most attractive residence sec- 

 tion of Jersey City, and it is understood that the author- 

 ities are about to advertise for proposals to plant it with 

 trees by contract. This is the ordinary process when tree- 

 planting is done in almost every city of the country, 

 and where the grade, as in this case, is often several 

 feet below the surface of the ground, it is very plain 

 that the hard-pan in which the trees must be set con- 

 tains no food for their nourishment, and is not in a proper 

 mechanical condition to receive the roots. It is often the 

 case, too, that a street is built on an embankment filled in 

 at the bottom with large stones, leaving air-spaces between 

 them, above which is a layer of rubbish and then a layer 

 of earth. Of course, no tree can be planted in such a 

 position with any hope of health or longevity. There is 

 no need to repeat here what has been so often said, that 

 money which is expended in planting street-trees is worse 

 than wasted unless the entire work is done with intelligence 

 and skill. No sickly tree can be beautiful or useful, 

 and trees which are not properly selected and prop- 

 erly planted in ground prepared by men who know 

 how to perform every operation, are sure, in time, to 

 offend the eye and depress the mind of every be- 

 holder. In sterile hard-pan an excavation twelve feet 

 across and three feet deep, and filled with good loam, 

 makes a fairly safe place to plant a tree in, provided enough 

 loam is used, and it is allowed to remain at least one 

 winter to settle and become firm before the tree is planted. 

 Even then only a few kinds have any prospect of living 

 when their leaves are exposed to a city's smoke and dust, 

 and their roots are kept dry by excessive drainage. When 

 the proper varieties are selected, nursery-grown trees with 

 abundant roots, straight stems and heads pruned for the 

 special purpose, should invariably be used. 



Handsome trees will never be found in our cities until the 

 work is placed in the hands of responsible and competent 

 officers from the very beginning, whose duty it is not only 

 to select the trees and plant them, but to supervise all 

 pruning. Pruning is needed for the best development of 

 any tree, but where uniform shape is desirable, where the 

 natural low-branching form of many species is quite out of 

 place, and where limited root-room often demands a corre- 

 sponding reduction in the size of the top, as is the case with 

 street-trees, careful pruning is an absolute necessity if even 

 moderate success is to be attained. No tree is safe, however, 

 when attacked by an axe or saw in ignorant hands. Un- 

 skillful pruning will not only destroy the beauty of a tree, 

 but will leave raw wounds to invite attacks of fungi which 

 bring disease and death. Even in the city of Washington, 

 which contains more good trees than any city of the Union, 

 it has been almost impossible to find expert pruners, and 

 many rows of trees have suffered from improper cutting. 

 Some trees, like the American Elm, resent the removal of 

 any large branches, and, therefore, one of the characteris- 

 tics of a good street-tree is that it will endure pruning well. 

 This is one of the good qualities of the Oriental Plane-tree, 



and rows of these trees in Washington, which have been 

 properly pruned once or twice, are a delight to the eye. 

 Even the White Maple, which has many qualities that are 

 not desirable, serves an admirable purpose when it has 

 been properly cut in, as has been done in certain streets of 

 the Capital. 



One important factor in the maintenance of the street- 

 trees in Washington is the nursery in which some eight 

 acres of the varieties generally planted in the city are mak- 

 ing a thrifty growth. Here young trees are properly pruned 

 and trained and prepared for removal by transplanting, so 

 that symmetrical specimens of uniform size are always to 

 be had when they are needed. This is an improvement on 

 the practice of paying contractors for pulling trees out of a 

 swamp, or even of buying surplus nursery stock that has 

 been left to take care of itself. The first step, however, to 

 insist upon for the reform of street-planting in our cities 

 is that the work from beginning to end should be placed 

 in the charge of experts who know trees, who know how 

 to plant them and how to care for them afterward. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — XXVII. 



IN few other countries are the forests of greater impor- 

 tance to the prosperity of the nation than they are in 

 Japan. The formation of the islands, with their high cen- 

 tral mountain-ranges and short, precipitous, swift-flowing 

 rivers, make floods particularly prevalent and danger- 

 ous, and the necessity of preserving the forest-covering of 

 the upper mountain-slopes proportionately great ; and no 

 other race, with the single exception, perhaps, of the people 

 of the United States, is such a consumer of forest-products 

 as the Japanese, all their houses and most of their articles 

 of domestic use being entirely made of wood. The traveler, 

 therefore, watches with some interest, as bearing upon the 

 future of Japan, the condition and prospects of her forests. 

 According to the most reliable statistics available, those 

 compiled by Rein, and based in part, at least, upon the re- 

 port of the Japanese Forestry Exhibit at Edinburgh in 1834, 

 thirty-seven per cent, of the three southern islands — that is, 

 of the whole empire, with the exception of the practically 

 unsettled island of Yezo — is desert or unproductive land. 

 Twenty-three per cent, is occupied by the mountain- 

 forests, eighteen per cent, by the cultivated forests, while 

 rather less than twenty per cent, is devoted to agriculture, 

 the remainder being taken up by buildings, roads, etc. 

 The cultivated forests, in which it is presumed that 

 the areas surrounding the temples are included, which, 

 although covered with splendid groves of trees, are unpro- 

 ductive, except so far as they are made to furnish material 

 for repairing or rebuilding the temples, are well stocked 

 with coniferous trees — Retinosporas, Cryptomerias and 

 Pines — and furnish all the building-material used in the 

 empire. It is said that the Japanese have been making 

 these plantations for twelve hundred years ; and if this is 

 true, they began planting trees for timber before any other 

 people with whose agriculture we are acquainted. Scien- 

 tific methods might, perhaps, make these plantations, which 

 are mostly the property of individuals, rather more produc- 

 tive, but any great increase of forest-supplies can only fol- 

 low the better management of the mountain-forests or the 

 replanting of desert-lands. The mountain-forests may be 

 roughly divided into two belts, the upper composed princi- 

 pally of Hemlocks, and extending about five thousand feet 

 over the sea-level to the timber-line, and the lower stretch- 

 ing between two and five thousand feet elevation, and com- 

 posed of Beeches, Oaks, Maples, Birches, Pines and a few 

 Firs and Spruces. The upper belt, owing to its inaccessi- 

 bility and the bad condition of the mountain-roads, is 

 practically untouched, except where mining operations 

 have created a local demand for timber. Scientific man- 

 agement and good roads would make this upper conif- 

 erous forest yield quantities of valuable material. The 

 deciduous belt below it, which ought to be the most pro- 

 ductive part of the Japanese forest, is, wherever we entered 



