86 



Garden and Forest. 



[February 19, 1890. 



is undergoing rapid development, and houses are spring- 

 ing up on every side. The establishment of a small public 

 park at this place, which need not exceed three or four 

 acres in extent to accomplish this object, would protect the 

 trees from the dangers which now threaten them, and 

 would make a valuable and interesting public resort within 

 walking or driving distance of the homes of a very large 

 number of people. 



Mr. J. G. Lemmon, the accomplished botanist of the 

 California State Board of Forestry, discusses the problem 

 of forest fires in the seventh bulletin issued by that board. 

 " It is," he says, "a common observation that forests are 

 usually bordered by a fringe of saplings and these by 

 points and patches of seedlings all apparently flourishing 

 finely and promising a material enlargement of the forest 

 area ; and scarce an instance is known where an edge of 

 a forest is dying off by the natural course of events. The 

 question arises, is this a normal attribute of forest-growth, 

 or of forest-development ? Did they always thus try to 

 expand, or has some change occurred to them or their en- 

 vironment that now enables them to increase their peri- 

 phery ? The answer to the problem is contained in the 

 two English words — Indian fires. The Indian desired 

 open prairies and intervals for his game, that the latter might 

 find better forage thereon, and also that he might the bet- 

 ter mark them for his arrows. With the retirement of the 

 Indian and the suspension of the annual forest and prairie- 

 fires, the forests freely expand, and it is well known that 

 young forests are covering large areas of the eastern 

 United States, and it is believed that the great diluvian 

 plains of the central west and of the Pacific slope might in 

 time be covered with trees, if the practice of modern agri- 

 culturists did not serve to prevent their growth, desirable 

 or otherwise. More than all the destructive processes of 

 the lumbermen, and the close grazing of the flocks and 

 herds of the stock raiser, is the ruin of the fire fiend; and 

 against him the blazing forests, the menaced settlements 

 and the ruined inhabitants of California appeal to citizens 

 generally and legislatures especially for instant and ade- 

 quate protection." It is by fires, as Mr. Lemmon points 

 out, that " young seedlings are destroyed utterly, and usu- 

 ally the saplings are killed off, not consumed, while on a 

 section of country from which the whole tree-growths 

 have been removed after a fire, weeds and brambles will 

 not come in until many years after. And how shall the cry- 

 ing evil of forest fires be stopped, where is the remedy, 

 and who shall apply it?" 



Mr. Lemmon is not the first thoughtful observer to 

 ask these questions. The answer, perhaps, is wise legis- 

 lation, but legislation will be useless unless it rests on 

 public sentiment; and public sentiment in this country will 

 not save the forests until the popular mind is more highly 

 educated than it is to-day upon all subjects relating to the 

 forests and their value to the nation. 



The Coast of Maine. 



F'ROM Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, 

 the broad entrance of the Gulf of Maine is two hundred 

 miles wide, and it is one hundred miles from each of these 

 capes to the corresponding ends of the coast of Maine at Kit- 

 tery and Quoddy. Thus Maine squarely faces the wide open- 

 ing between the capes, while to the east and west, beyond 

 her limits, stretch two great offshoots of the gulf, the bays 

 of Fundy and of Massachusetts. The latter and lesser bay 

 presents a south shore built mostly of sands and gravels in 

 beaches and bluffs, and a north shore of bold and enduring 

 rocks, both already overgrown with seaside hotels and cotr 

 tages. The Bay of Fundy, on the other hand, is little resorted 

 to for pleasure. Its shores in many parts are grandly high and 

 bold ; but its waters are moved by such rushing tides, and its 

 coasts are so frequently wrapt in cold fogs, that it will doubt- 

 less remain comparatively an unfrequented region. 



Along the coast of Maine, stretched for two hundred miles 

 from bay to bay, scenery and climate change from the Massa- 

 chusetts to the Fundy type. At Boston the average tempera- 

 ture of July is 70 ; at Eastport, at the farther end of Maine, it 



is 6i°. No such coolness is to be found along the thousand 

 miles of monotonous sand beach which front the Atlantic 

 south of the Gulf of Maine ; and though the coolness of the 

 waters of the gulf precludes most persons from sea bathing, 

 this freshness of the air will always be an irresistible attraction 

 to many thousands of dwellers in hot cities. Again, in con- 

 trast with the southern sea-beaches, the scenery of the Maine 

 coast is exceedingly interesting and refreshing. The mere 

 map of it is most attractive. Beginning at Piscataqua River, 

 a deep estuary whose swift tides flow through an archipelago 

 of rocks and small islands, the shore is at first made up of low 

 ledges forming ragged points, connected by sand or pebble 

 beaches, where farmers gather rock-weed after storms. Sea- 

 ward lies a group of dangerous rocks, the Isles of Shoals. 

 Beyond the tortuous outlet of York River and the Short and 

 Long Sands of York, Cape Neddick and Bald Head lift high 

 rocks toward the sea, and behind them rises Agamenticus 

 Hill, a conspicuous blue landmark sometimes visible from 

 Cape Ann, in Massachusetts. Low and sandy coasts succeed, 

 fronting the old towns of Wells and Kennebunk. Cape Por- 

 poise follows, a confused mass of rocky islets, salt marshes 

 and tidal flats ; then more long and short beaches, a lagoon 

 called Biddeford Pool, the mouth of Saco River barred by its 

 washings from the White Hills, more beaches, and so to Cape 

 Elizabeth, a broad wedge of rock pushed out to sea as if to 

 mark the entrance to the land-locked harbor of Portland. 



Thus far the coast is sufficiently rich in varied scenery — in 

 shores now high, now low, now wooded and now bare, now 

 gentle and now rough ; first thrust seaward in rocky capes, 

 then swept inland in curving beaches, and now and again 

 broken by the outlets of small rivers. Cape Elizabeth ends 

 this scenery, and introduces the voyager to a type still more 

 intricate, picturesque and distinctive. Casco Bay, with its 

 many branches running inland and its peninsulas and islands 

 stretching seaward, is the first of a succession of bays, " thor- 

 oughfares" and "reaches" which line the coast almost all 

 the rest of the way to Quoddy. The ragged edge of the main- 

 land becomes lost behind a maze of rock-bound islands, and 

 appears but seldom where the surf can strike it. The salt 

 water penetrates in deep and narrow channels into the very 

 woods, ebbs and flows in hundreds of frequented and unfre- 

 quented harbors, and enters into countless hidden nooks and 

 coves and narrows. Sand beaches become rare, and great 

 and small " sea walls " of worn stones or pebbles take their 

 place. Islands, islets, and ledges both dry and sunken, are 

 strewn on every hand. The tides flow among them with in- 

 creasing force, and the fog wraps them from sight more and 

 more frequently as the Bay of Fundy is' approached. Great 

 cliffs are rare until Grand Manan is reached, and high hills 

 come down to the sea only by Penobscot Bay and at Mount 

 Desert ; but, on the other hand, the variety of lesser topo- 

 graphic forms is very great. In Casco Bay, for instance, the 

 rocks trend north-east and south-west, and all the crowded 

 islands run out into reefs in these directions. Penobscot 

 Bay presents wide stretches of open water divided by well 

 massed islands, but still preserves a fine breadth of effect ; 

 and these islands differ greatly in form and character, accord- 

 ing as they are built of hard and glaciated granite or 

 of altered stratified rocks. The border bay of Passama- 

 quoddy is distinguished by fine headlands, which terminate 

 islands, generally lower than the heads. In like manner the 

 sounds and fiord-like rivers differ much from each other. 

 For instance, the Kennebec River is extremely narrow, and 

 many bold knobs of rock turn it this way and that ; but the 

 neighboring Sheepscot is fully three miles broad at its mouth, 

 and this noble width contracts but slowly ; while the Penobscot 

 above the Narrows takes on such a gentle appearance as to be 

 hardly recognizable as a river of eastern Maine, the general as- 

 pect of this part of the coast being distinctly wild and untamable. 



Doubtless the raggedness of the rocky shore is the first 

 cause of the almost forbidding aspect of the region, but the 

 changed character of the sea-coast woods is a second cause. 

 Beyond Cape Elizabeth, if capes and islands are wooded at all, 

 it is with the dark, stiff cresting of Spruce, Fir or Pine, fringed 

 perhaps with Birch and Mountain Ash. Near Kittery fine 

 Elms and even Hickories may be seen on the open shore, but 

 there is a gradual dying out of many familiar species as the 

 coast is traversed eastward. Thus Holly and Inkberry, 

 together with Prickly Ash, Flowering Dogwood and Sassafras, 

 are not seen near the sea north of Massachusetts Bay. White 

 Cedar, after following the coast all the way from the Gulf of 

 Mexico, dies out near Kittery. York River is said to see the last 

 Buttonwoods, Saco River the last Chestnuts, and the Kenne- 

 bec the last Tupelos and Hickories. Conversely, this coast 

 has its many forerunners of the flora of the far north. While 



