26 



Garden and Forest. 



[January 15, 1890. 



mands. It is- to be hoped, furthermore, that this paper 

 will be read and pondered by friends of our forest through- 

 out the entire country. Copies of the memorial can be 

 obtained from Mr. William S. Lyon, forester of the com- 

 mission, whose address is Los Angeles, California, and 

 who invites the co-operation of public-spirited citizens in 

 every part of the Union in urging its consideration upon 

 the Congress now in session. 



A prospectus relating to the new scholarships offered 

 under the foundation of the Missouri Botanical Garden has 

 been issued. Applications for these scholarships, which 

 will not exceed six in number, must be in the hands of 

 the director, Professor Trelease, not later than the 1st of 

 March. A preliminary examination will be held on the 

 4th of that month. If there are more than six applicants 

 for the scholarships, a competitive examination will be 

 held on the 7th and 8th. The preliminary examination 

 will be confined to English grammar, reading, writing, 

 spelling, arithmetic and geography. The competitive ex- 

 amination, only held in case there are more applicants 

 than scholarships, will embrace the history of the United 

 States, English literature, algebra, German, elements of 

 botany and zoology, and such other subjects as may be 

 prescribed. Arrangements are made by which candidates 

 living remote from St. Louis, who may desire to save 

 the expense of a journey to that city, can be examined at 

 their homes by the principal of some approved school. 

 Successful candidates will begin work in the garden the 

 1st of April. They are to be lodged in comfortable rooms 

 in a dwelling adjoining the garden under the charge of the 

 head-gardener or some other competent person. Board 

 can be obtained at reasonable cost. 



It is the intention of the trustees of the school to make, 

 as far as possible, the surroundings of the pupils home- 

 like, although they assume no responsibility for their be- 

 havior outside of working hours. The scholarships may 

 be held for six years, and the incumbents will be paid fort- 

 nightly at the rate of $200 a year for the first year, $250 for 

 the second year and $300 for the remaining years. Dur- 

 ing the first year of their scholarship, garden pupils will be 

 expected to work at the practical duties of the garden nine 

 or ten hours daily, according to the season, and to read 

 the notes and articles referring to the subject of their work 

 in one or more good journals. In the second year, in ad- 

 dition to five hours' manual work, they will be given in- 

 struction and will be expected to do thorough reading in 

 vegetable-gardening, flower-gardening, simple fruit-cul- 

 ture and orchard-culture. During the third year, in addi- 

 tion to their five hours' manual labor, they are to be in- 

 structed in forestry, elemental botany, landscape-garden- 

 ing and the rudiments of surveying and grading, and will 

 be required to take charge of clipping or indexing some 

 department of the current gardening papers. The fourth 

 year they are to study the botany of weeds, garden vege- 

 tables and fruits, with simple book-keeping and the legal 

 forms for leases, deeds, etc. The fifth year they are to be 

 instructed in vegetable physiology, economic entomology, 

 fungi, especially those which cause diseases of cultivated 

 plants ; and each pupil, in addition to his five hours Of 

 manual labor, will keep a simple set of accounts pertain- 

 ing to one department of the garden. They will study, 

 during the sixth year, the botany of garden-plants, trees in 

 their winter aspects, and the theory of special gardening 

 connected with some branch of the work they are charged 

 with in the garden. 



With such opportunities for practice and study, a young 

 man of ordinary intelligence and industry ought to be well 

 equipped at the end of his six years, and able to command 

 agreeable and remunerative labor. The demand for thor- 

 oughly instructed men to serve as managers of public 

 parks and private estates is large already in this country, 

 and steadily increasing. Skillful plant-growers abound, 

 but really good gardeners, in the broad sense of the term, 

 are difficult to find in America and in every other country. 



The Forest Pavilion at the French Exhibition. 



THE exhibition of the forest department of the French 

 ■*■ government at Paris last summer was perhaps the most 

 comprehensive and best arranged display of its kind that 

 has ever been made. The Forest Pavilion, which appears in 

 our illustration on page 32, and its contents, were, of course, 

 of the highest significance to visitors interested specially in 

 forests and their products, and there was, perhaps, no one 

 spot in the whole exhibition more frequented by the general 

 public, who found, apparently, much to attract and instruct in 

 the beauty of the building itself and in the variety of its con- 

 tents. Indeed, so great was the crowd of people who 

 thronged the building from morning till night, that anything 

 like a critical examination of its contents was practically out 

 of the question. 



The building,* constructed entirely of logs cut in the forests 

 belonging to the French government, representing all the 

 indigenous trees of France and covered with their bark, was 

 125 feet long and nearly 120 feet wide. It consisted of one 

 main hall, surrounded on three sides by a broad porch or 

 piazza, with a half-story added at the rear and reached by an 

 interior staircase, which admitted also to a wide gallery sur- 

 rounding the main hall. The general scheme of the arrange- 

 ment was due to M. de Gayffier, Director-General of the 

 French forests, and was carried out most intelligently by a 

 young architect, M. Lucien Leblanc. 



Around the interior of the main hall trunks of the different 

 species were arranged as columns to support the gallery, and 

 between these were placed, first, a large cross-section of a 

 trunk of the species, and then above this artistically grouped 

 samples of all the principal objects made from the wood — an 

 arrangement which enabled the visitor to see at a glance the 

 wood of any given species and the principal products manu- 

 factured from it. The centre of the hall was occupied by 

 working models of saw-mills and various machines used in 

 working wood, and a number of specimens showing the 

 methods of cutting up logs to the best advantage. The gal- 

 lery surrounding the main hall contained a large number of 

 smaller wood specimens, a large collection of microscopic 

 slides illustrating the structure of the French woods, models 

 of fungi injurious to wood, a most instructive series of 

 specimens showing the results of different injuries to wood, 

 abnormal growths, and the like, with an immense number of 

 the minor products of the forest arranged systematically 

 under the different species, tree-fruits, seeds, etc. 



The most interesting part of the exhibition, to the general 

 public at least, was found in the half-story. Here, in two or 

 three small rooms, comfortably arranged with tables and 

 seats, were maps and plans of French forests and immense 

 collections of photographs illustrating French forest scenes in 

 all their varied aspects. These rooms contained two plans in 

 relief of the torrents of Vaudaine and of Riouchanal, and of 

 various torrents in the Hautes-Alpes, and a series of water- 

 colors of various torrents both in the Alps and in the 

 Pyrenees. Three dioramas most artistically arranged in the 

 rear of the half-story exhibited, in a remarkable and instruc- 

 tive way, the effects of mountain torrents and the labor re- 

 quired to restrain them within reasonable bounds. The first 

 represented the torrent of Bourget in the Basses-Alpes, which 

 for years devastated the valley of the Ubaye, but which, thanks 

 to the intelligence and energy of the French forest-department, 

 is now conquered. This end was accomplished by building 

 a series of dams and by raising the bed of the stream bodily 

 above its natural level, the flow of the water into the channel 

 being checked by reducing the slopes and covering them 

 with a forest of coniferous trees. The diorama shows the 

 break-waters with the workmen engaged in planting the trees 

 that to-day cover 1,200 acres, bordering an ordinary mountain 

 stream which eighteen years before was one of the dangerous 

 torrents of France. The second diorama shows the torrents 

 of Riou Bourdoux, also in the Basses-Alpes, famous for its 

 devastations and the most dangerous torrent of the French 

 Alps. It once destroyed everything along its course and 

 threatened the extermination of Barcelonnette, near which 

 place it has its mouth. The diorama shows a dam con- 

 structed by the forest department, a colossal construction in 

 masonry and hydraulic mortar, twenty-five to thirty feet high 

 and nearly 300 feet long, intended to hold back the solid 

 material brought down by the torrent and to prevent the pas- 

 sage of anything but the water. The work was only com- 

 menced in 1875, but a young forest already covers and holds 

 the ground which, before it was planted, was entirely bare and 



* A description of the Pavilion, with some account of the forest material which it 

 contained, was given in Garden and Forest (ii, 478, 490.) 



