62 



Garden and Forest. 



[February 5, 1890. 



altogether proper that adequate provision should be made 

 for it in appropriate places at public cost. 



In speaking- of both these types of gardening-art, we 

 have referred of course to genuine art and not to any 

 spurious imitation or substitute for it. Only a master en- 

 dowed with the creative faculty in ample measure could, 

 with the material at hand — common grass, common 

 shrubs and trees— work out a landscape so complete and 

 satisfying as that in the Buffalo Park, the very strength of 

 which is its simplicity. Almost as hard to find is an artist 

 with the constructive talent and refined sense of color and 

 form which will enable him to conceive and carry out a 

 creditable design in strictly ornamental planting. When 

 the writers who can see no beauty in a natural landscape, 

 and insist upon higher color and more elaborate form in 

 planting, will point out some satisfactory examples of this 

 kind of work, or state with definiteness what it is they wish 

 to substitute for the American flags and carpet-patterns 

 and ribbon-lines now prevalent, they will command the 

 gratitude of every one interested in garden-art. 



There can be no doubt in the mind of any one who has 

 given the most casual attention to forests and forest re- 

 quirements that the productive capacity of any piece of 

 woodland in this country can be increased by the applica- 

 tion of a little common sense to its care, or that the wealth 

 of the country can be increased enormously by the gen- 

 eral introduction of wise systems of forest management. 

 Men, or the great majority of them, who own woodland 

 or forests will take care of them only when they can be 

 made to realize that there is money in doing it, and not 

 before. They must be made to understand that certain 

 systems of culture must be applied to the care of land cov- 

 ered with trees as well as to land covered with other crops. 

 Every authoritative word about our forests which is writ- 

 ten or spoken with this object in view has its value. The 

 strongest arguments are those based on facts like these in 

 the following extract from a communication made by Mr. 

 J. D. Lyman, of Exeter, New Hampshire, to the America?i 

 Cultivator : 



" The proper care and management of our Pine-forests 

 must be in the line of experience and actual facts. Theory 

 will not answer alone, nor are the writings of European for- 

 esters always sate guides in American practice. I will give you 

 a few simple facts in illustration. 



" I have in mind a clump of Pine-trees, which I remember 

 from childhood, for it stands close by the burial-place of rela- 

 tives of mine. An aunt of: mine remembers these Pines in 

 her childhood, and she was born in 1802. It is safe to say that 

 they are ioo years of age. These Pines came up thick, and 

 haVe never been thinned out, except as, in their struggle for 

 existence, some have been so shut out from sunshine and 

 crowded as to die. They are yet so small that I have never 

 heard any one refer to these trees as being a clump of timber. 

 They are tall and almost limbless, stunted, spindling trees, 

 and I think very few of them one foot in diameter. 



" In the winter of 1854-55 I bought a hundred-acre lot of land 

 covered with a light deciduous growth, with small White Pines 

 scattered among it. A very few years before the previous 

 owners had cut out all the Pines large enough for small fram- 

 ing timber. It is well known that small trees are cut for this 

 purpose. I paid $600 for the lot, and was laughed at for giv- 

 ing so much. I commenced to cut Pine-timber upon this lot 

 in the winter of 1862-63, and in five years had taken $1,900 net 

 from it. In 1870 I sold the remaining saw timber upon it for 

 $600 on the stump. This illustrates how rapidly scattering 

 Pines will grow. 



" In Januiry, 1870, I bought a lot and cut the Pine upon it 

 closer than I ever cut them for timber on any other lot. I cut trees 

 not much over six inches in diameter. A gentleman rallied 

 me about putting cord-wood in as logs. About four acres of 

 very thick little Pines were left after cutting close as I have 

 stated, and more or less Pines, so small as to escape even such 

 close cutting, were left scattered over perhaps twenty acres. 

 In 1873 or 1874 I commenced to have these little Pines thinned 

 out. This thinning has gone on from time to time till the 

 present. Much wood, shingle stuff and small timber has been 

 cut out, all of which has paid well for cutting, so that the thin- 

 ning has cost me nothing. And now my larger Pines on 



this lot are much larger than the largest in the clump first re- 

 ferred to near the burial-place, though only about one-third as 

 old. I think the Pines on this lot would to-day sell for from 

 five to ten times as much as they would have sold for if they 

 had not been thinned. 



"These and many other instances convince me that it is very 

 easy in many cases to increase the growth of timber some 

 four-fold upon our lands, and have the thinnings which are 

 cut out pay or more than pay all the expense of the necessary 

 labor. On the second lot I have mentioned, the Pines were so 

 scattered and the other growth so small that the Pines had 

 got above the other trees and grew rapidly without aid. As a 

 physician may kill with good medicine unwisely administered, 

 so one may almost ruin his grove by injudicious thinning. I 

 have seen such instances. Yet the proper thinning of thick 

 young trees is of very great importance." 



The Problem of Heather in North America. 



Tj'EW wild plants in the British Islands and on the continent 

 -^ of Europe are more attractive to American visitors than 

 the very common Heath or "Heather" (Calluna vulgaris). 

 The moors of the north are brightened by its color, and there 

 seems to be no end to the prodigality with which Nature has 

 scattered in barren places these clusters of delicate foliage and 

 far more delicate blossoms. To the dwellers on the edges of 

 the wastes carpeted by Heather the plant is hardly more than 

 a hold-fast to bind down drifting sands, since sheep and cattle 

 do not willingly use it as food. And it is not unlikely that 

 much amusement has been caused by the expressions of de- 

 light which have fallen from the lips of Americans who have 

 seen for the first time Heather in profusion. Although the 

 present writer has many times seen Heather, and perhaps 

 enough of it, in different parts of Europe, the sight of the plant 

 when bound together as stable-brooms or used as bedding for 

 cattle has never ceased to appear as a sort of an indignity 

 against which he ought to remonstrate. 



The reason for this feeling on the part of Americans is plain 

 enough. In the first place, the plant is pretty, despite its com- 

 monness everywhere in the old world, and, in the second 

 place, it does not grow, and cannot be made to grow, " wild" 

 in our own country. Here and there, as we shall see presently, 

 it has been found in small amount, but it has had only a pre- 

 carious hold upon the soil, with no assurance that at anyplace 

 as yet unvisited our botanists will find it well established. 



This lack of Heather here seems all the more strange when 

 we remember that the climate of the north temperate zone is 

 substantially the same here as on the other side of the Atlan- 

 tic. Making all allowance for the differences produced by the 

 influence of the Gulf Stream, which gives to the west coast of 

 Europe a warmer climate than we enjoy at the same latitude, 

 it is hard to see why this plant, so common there, should be 

 wanting here. We must ask, if at one time it covered the 

 northern hemisphere, where has our share of it gone, and if it 

 never was here at all, why does it not invade our territory, as 

 so many of the other common plants of Europe have done, 

 and which we call weeds ? In the last century tiie great Lin- 

 naeus wrote that two plants threatened by their spread to cover 

 the whole earth — namely, Tobacco and common Heath. To- 

 bacco has made pretty good progress, but so far as Heather is 

 concerned his prophecy has not been in any marked degree 

 fulfilled. . 



So far as the Heath family, as a whole, is concerned, we 

 may say that in our country we have a fair share, but that of 

 the true Heaths themselves we have practically none at all. 

 At Nantucket two species have been found, but in such small 

 amount and under such circumstances that no one thinks of 

 regarding them as native plants. 



The true Heather (Calluna vulgaris) was early reported as 

 occurring in Newfoundland, but Mr. Charles J. Sprague, who 

 investigated the evidence upon which one of the citations 

 rested, was forced to decide against its authenticity. Other 

 localities have, however, been found since, both in Newfound- 

 land and in the Provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 

 but in all instances the space covered in each locality has been 

 reported as rather small, and in a few of the cases there was 

 strong suspicion that the plants had been introduced by man. 



In July, 1861, Mr. Jackson Dawson exhibited at one of the 

 weekly meetings of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 

 a plant of Scotch Heather, which he had labeled "Native 

 Heath, found growing wild within twenty miles of Boston." A 

 committee of the Society made a careful examination of the 

 locality. From their report communicated to the American 

 Journal of Science, January, 1862, p. 22, a few facts are here- 

 with given. The plants grew over about half an acre of 



