April 2, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



161 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building. New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — The Sugar Maple. (Illustrated.)— The State of California 



and the Yosemite Valley 161 



Sports .Maxwell T. Masters, M.D. 162 



New or Little Known Plants: — Syringa Pekinensis. (Illustrated.). .C. S. S. 164 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 164 



Cultural Department :— The Potato Robert P. Harris, M.D. 166 



Some Hardy Trees and Shrubs Professor J. L. Budd. 168 



Chrysanthemums in Pots. — I T. D. Hatfield. 168 



Easter Plants W. H. Taplin. 168 



The Spring Garden J. N. Gerard. 169 



Double Cropping in the Garden W. H. Bull. 169 



Phajus tuberculosus John Weathers. 169 



Heuchera sanguinea, Aubrietia Leichtlini O. 170 



Correspondence: — Some Practices in Grafting F. L. Temple. 170 



Longevity of the Elm Myron B. Benton. 170 



ASilva of New England F. Skinner. 171 



Recent Publications 171 



Exhibitions ; — The Flower Show at Philadelphia 171 



Notes 172 



Catalogues Received 172 



Illustrations : — Syringa Pekinensis, Fig. 30 165 



A Sugar Maple in New Hampshire, Fig. 31 167 



The Sugar Maple. 



THE illustration on page 167 represents the Sugar 

 Maple as this tree often appears when it stands in an 

 isolated position on a New England hill-side. The subject 

 of our illustration is in its prime, and shows the habit of 

 the Sugar Maple at that period of its life when it has lost 

 the rather narrow upright growth which often characterizes 

 it during the first seventy-five years of its life and before it 

 has taken on the broad-branched spreading habit certain 

 individuals of this species assume in old age when soil 

 conditions are specially favorable to their very best 

 development. 



The Sugar Maple is one of the finest of the deciduous- 

 leaved trees of North America. It is by far the noblest of 

 the American Maples, although the Silver Maple develops 

 occasionally a greater trunk-girth, and it is perhaps the 

 noblest of all the Maples, although the Sycamore Maple of 

 Europe in the mountain valleys of the Tyrol is, when at 

 its best, a tree second to none of its class in spread of 

 branches and dignity of port. But the European Maple 

 lacks the lightness and brightness of foliage and the grace- 

 fulness of inflorescence peculiar to the Sugar Maple, while 

 it assumes in autumn none of the brilliant colors which 

 our American tree takes on at that season of the year and 

 which make it then the most conspicuous feature of the 

 landscape wherever it abounds. 



The Elm, to many people, is the characteristic tree of 

 New England, because perhaps more than other trees it 

 was selected by the early settlers to stand sentinel over 

 their homesteads ; but the Sugar Maple is hardly less char- 

 acteristic of New England, and of all the Northern States, 

 where it is almost everywhere a very common tree, grow- 

 ing on hill-sides and in valleys, and of late years so gener- 

 ally planted by the road-side that it is now more often seen 

 than the Elm, which is a more fastidious tree than the 

 Maple about its nourishment, more easily affected by 

 drought, and a far more inviting prey to noxious insects. 



The Sugar Maple economically is one of the most valu- 

 able American trees. The wood it produces is heavy and 

 hard, close-grained, tough and strong. It has a surface 

 which can be highly polished, so that it is an excellent and 



much esteemed furniture wood, especially those peculiar 

 forms with twisted and contorted grain known as birdseye 

 maple. It is from the wood of this tree that American 

 shoe-lasts are made in preference to that of any other, and 

 it is used in the manufacture of hundreds of other objects, 

 great and small, from the keel of a boat to a shoe-peg. 

 The New Englander who wants to burn better fuel than 

 that afforded by the Sugar Maple must use Hickory. The 

 Indians knew the value of the sap of this tree and soon 

 taught Europeans how to convert it into sugar. The pro- 

 duction of Maple-sugar was once a far more important 

 industry comparatively than it is now, although the crop 

 is steadily increasing in bulk and in money value. 



The Sugar Maple has one characteristic which very few 

 American trees, except some of the Oaks, share with it to 

 the same degree, and one which, when American forests 

 are managed with the view of getting from them all they 

 can be made to produce, will make it one of the trees most 

 generally employed in the operations of scientific silvi- 

 culture. It has the capacity to germinate and grow to a con- 

 siderable size under the more or less dense shade of other 

 trees. Young Sugar Maples form sometimes in the northern 

 counties of this state, in northern Michigan and other parts of 

 the country where this tree is common, the larger part of 

 the undergrowth which has sprung up in the deciduous 

 forests. These self-sown plants, in spite of the shade which, 

 of course, checks their growth, grow with a good deal of 

 vigor and reach a considerable height. The Beech in 

 Europe possesses the same power of growing for many 

 years under and among other trees, and it is for this reason 

 that the Beech is one of the most valuable subjects in all 

 European deciduous-forest operations looking to natural 

 forest-succession — the prime motive of modern scientific 

 forestry. The Sugar Maple is a far more valuable tree in 

 the material which it produces than the European Beech, 

 and American foresters, when we have them, will have 

 good cause for congratulating themselves in the possession 

 of a subject so valuable and so easily managed. 



Our illustration is made from a photograph of a tree grow- 

 ing in a rocky pasture at Weed's Mills, in the town of North 

 Sandwich, New Hampshire, at an elevation of a thousand 

 feet above the sea-level. It was taken by Dr. Wm. Her- 

 bert Rollins, of Boston, to whom we are indebted for its use. 



The Governor of California has felt impelled to write 

 a public letter to the Senators and Representatives of 

 that state in relation to the criticism in the Century Mag- 

 azine of the present supervision of the Yosemite Valley. 

 It is to be hoped that the Commissioners have a more intel- 

 ligent appreciation of their responsibilities than the Governor 

 displays, for he makes it plain that he has not the remotest 

 comprehension of the questions under discussion. Such 

 an exhibition in an official of his rank is not an improv- 

 ing one, and yet it is hardly to be regretted that some 

 of his personal allusions were so unjust as to compel Mr. 

 Frederick Law Olmsted to make a formal statement which 

 explains his early connection with the administration of 

 the valley and his attitude in relation to the present criti- 

 cism, for Mr. Olmsted takes occasion besides this to state 

 some of the obligations of government when it assumes 

 the duty of preserving natural scenery. After saying that 

 the remonstrance in the Century points to nothing in the 

 methods of the Commissioners that would be objection- 

 able if the concern of the nation in the matter were of the 

 same kind that it is with the state's dealings with mineral 

 deposits, irrigation, schools, railroads or even forests, Mr. 

 Olmsted adds : 



" If the Governor and the Commissioners are in error, their 

 error probably lies not in any intentional disregard of the 

 state's obligation, but in overlooking the fact that in natural 

 scenery that which is of essential value lies in conditions of a 

 character not to be exactly described and made the subject 

 of specific injunctions in an Act of Congress, and not to be 

 perfectly discriminated without other wisdom than that which 

 is gained in schools and colleges, counting-rooms and banks. 



