i5o 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 26, 1890. 



knowledge of' which would not prove of distinct advan- 

 tage to the gardener or farmer. 



There are, no doubt, gardeners, as there are men in 

 other walks of life, whose practice is hampered or misdi- 

 rected by what they think they know; but it is hardly fair 

 to lay the blame for such failure at the door of science. 



Legislation Against the Gypsy Moth. 



WE believe that the bill looking toward the extermina- 

 tion of this insect, now before the Massachusetts 

 Legislature, should receive favorable consideration. The 

 caterpillar of the Gypsy Moth is known to be a destructive 

 pest in the gardens and orchards of Europe, and it has evi- 

 dently, within the twenty years since its unfortunate intro- 

 duction into Medford, obtained a firm foothold, and unless 

 it is repressed, it will perhaps spread throughout New Eng- 

 land and the Northern and Central States. The amount of 

 $25,000 asked of the General Assembly will, a few years 

 hence, seem a not extravagant sum, should the insect be 

 at once exterminated, a matter not difficult of accomplish- 

 ment, if the suggestions made by Professor Fernald in his 

 pamphlet issued by the Massachusetts Experiment Station 

 are carried out. 



The chief value, however, of this particular measure would 

 be that it might lead to the passage of a general act against in- 

 sect depredators. Massachusetts has been liberal in the pub- 

 lication of illustrated works on injurious insects, such as 

 Harris' Treatise on Insects, and the amounts expended in 

 this direction have been a good investment. The General 

 Government, too, has made liberal grants to the State Ex- 

 periment Stations; but unless the people of each state co- 

 operate in applying the practical remedies against these 

 pests, they will continue to be an exhaustive drain on the 

 resources of farmers and fruit-growers. Had the Legisla- 

 ture of Massachusetts in the early part of the century 

 passed acts, with suitable appropriations, against the tent- 

 caterpillar and canker-worm, how much desolation of 

 orchards and loss of shade-trees might have been pre- 

 vented! Even now, every June as one travels from Boston 

 to Portsmouth, or in any direction from Boston, he beholds 

 ravaged orchards and leafless trees, which look as if a fire 

 had passed through them. A few orchards are saved, and 

 it has been again and again demonstrated that with a little 

 care and slight expense an Apple orchard can be easily pre- 

 served from the attacks of caterpillars. But when a few keep 

 these pests away by the use of simple preventives, their 

 careless neighbors take no precautions and suffer their 

 shade-trees and orchards to be worm-ridden. The result is 

 that the worms are transported by the winds over fences 

 from infested Elms ; the females climb over fences, and 

 thus vitiate the best laid plans of the more public-spirited 

 planters. A law compelling the indifferent or careless to 

 co-operate in slaying and preventing the ravages of these 

 pests might accomplish a great deal toward reducing their 

 numbers. And why should there not be legislation against 

 insect pests, as well as game-laws or dog-laws or acts 

 against allowing cattle to run at large or permitting noxious 

 weeds to go to seed ? 



Whatever may be the tendency to over-legislation in our 

 country, it is a reasonable course to compel every land- 

 holder to co-operate in preventing these insect ravages ; 

 for if the owners of leafless orchards and defoliated shade- 

 trees are permitted to maintain insect-nuisances, they will 

 defeat every effort of their more enterprising neighbors 

 who are willing to take measures for protecting their trees. 



The Cypress of Montezuma. 



THERE appeared not long ago in thesecolumns (volume iii., 

 page 2) an account of the deciduous Cypress {Taxodium 

 distichum), with a view of a swamp in southern Indiana cov- 

 ered with a forest of these trees surrounded by their peculiar 

 root growths, the so-called Cypress-knees. 



The illustration on page 155 of this issue represents the 

 trunk of a tree of the same species and one of the most inter- 

 esting and best known trees in America, the *' Cypress of Monte- 



zuma," die largest of the famous Cypress-trees in the gardens 

 of Chapultepec, near the City of Mexico, and a noted tree 

 nearly four centuries ago. It belongs to the same species as 

 our deciduous Cypress of the Southern States, which extends 

 southward through some of the high valleys of Mexico nearly 

 to Guatemala, growing in these southern stations in compara- 

 tively dry ground, and without producing the knees which 

 characterize the more northern trees, the inhabitants of deep 

 swamps and inundated river banks. The "Cypress of Monte- 

 zuma" is a tall and still graceful tree, rising to a height of 170 

 feet, with a trunk to which different travelers have ascribed a 

 girth varying from forty to nearly fifty feet, the discrepancies 

 in the measurements being due, no doubt, to the different 

 points above the surface of the ground at which they were 

 made. It stands near the hardly less famous spring, the 

 " Bath of Montezuma," the source of the water supply of the 

 Aztec capital, to which it was carried on a splendid aqueduct 

 of 900 arches. 



The tree of Montezuma is only one of a number of individ- 

 ual Cypress-trees growing in different parts of Mexico, famous 

 for their antiquity, their vast dimensions and the historical as- 

 sociations which cluster about them. Distinguished natural- 

 ists* have examined their history and computed their age, 

 which, in the case of the "Cypress of Montezuma," has been 

 estimated to be about seven centuries; while that of the larger 

 tree of Santa Maria del Tule is believed to be nearly 2,000 

 years old. This tree, the largest deciduous Cypress of which 

 there is any authentic record, stands in the centre of the village 

 of Tule, on the road from Oazaca to Guatemala by the way of 

 Tehuantepec, within the enclosure of the parish church, and is 

 a conspicuous object from all the country round. The meas- 

 urements of this tree given by travelers vary a great deal, and 

 it is difficult to compare them satisfactorily, as they generally 

 lack precise information of the exact manner in which they 

 were made. The latest measurements of this tree which we 

 have seen were made a year ago and are as follows : Circum- 

 ference of the trunk five feet from the ground, following all its 

 sinuosities, 146 feet ; actual circumference five feet from the 

 ground, 104 feet; total height of the tree, 150 feet; longest 

 diameter of the trunk, forty feet ; shortest diameter of the 

 trunk, twenty feet ; spread of branches, 141 feet. 



Hardly less famous than the Cypress of Santa Maria del Tule 

 is the Ahuehuete of the village of Atlisca, near Puebla, of 

 which the worthy Archbishop wrote three centuries ago, as 

 quoted by Gray: "The cavity of the trunk might con- 

 tain twelve or thirteen men on horseback ; and that in the 

 presence of the most illustrious Archbishop of Guatemala and 

 the Bishop of Puebla more than a hundred boys entered it." 

 This tree, according to Humboldt's measurements, had in his 

 time a trunk girth of sixy-six English feet, the cavity of the 

 trunk being about sixteen feet in diameter. 



" El Arbol de la Noche triste," the Tree of the Night of Sor- 

 row, another of the great Mexican Taxodiums, stands in the 

 little village of Popatela. It marks the spot where the soldiers 

 of Cortez went down like sheep before the Aztec hordes, their 

 backs to the foe. The trunk of this tree girths about sixty 

 feet, and although the top and many of the branches are in a 

 state of advanced decay, the tree still rises above the little 

 church close to which it stands and which was built to com- 

 memorate the battle. 



Our illustration of the trunk of the "Cypress of Montezuma " is 

 made from a photograph taken by Miss A. L. Rotch, of Boston, 

 to whose kindness we are indebted for its use. 



Holiday Notes in Southern France and Northern 



Italy.— XIII. 



1VT EARLY twenty miles south-west of Nice is the pretty town 

 -^ of Cannes, a wonderful horticultural centre. The princi- 

 pal promenade is that of La Croisette, which, as far as the beauty 

 of the trees is concerned, is preferable to the famous Prome- 

 nade des Anglais at Nice. Date Palms alternate with Platanus 

 acerifolia, and here and there large Oleanders are thriving 

 between their more majestic neighbors. The Planes do re- 

 markably, well close to the sea. Apparently self-sown, high 

 up in the chinks of rocks and walls on the way up to Mont 

 Chevalier, Solanum glaucum was perfectly at home, growing 

 very freely and flowering abundantly. From the top of the 

 hill just named a series of fine views are obtained, especially 

 of the lies de Lerins, in the largest of which, Ste. Marguerite, 

 that mysterious individual — the man with the iron mask — was 

 confined from 1686 to 1698. In our own times, Marshal Bazaine 



* Humboldt, " Essai Polit. Nov. Esp.," ed. 2, ii., 54. — A. De Candolle, in Bibl. 

 Univ. de GenZve, xlvi., 392. — A. Gray, "Scientific Papers," ii., 113. 



