April 30, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



209 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BV 



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 30, 1890. 

 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Legislation for the Adirondacks. — Danger from Burning 



Brush. — Typical Elms and Other Trees of Massachusetts 209 



Flower Painting 210 



A New England Bridge (Illustrated) 211 



In a California Canon Chas. H. Shinn. 211 



Vegetation in Southern Alabama Carl Mokr. 212 



New or Little Known Plants : — Ligustrum Sinense (Illustrated) 212 



Foreign Correspondence : — Covent Garden, London '■'Visitor." 212 



Cultural Department :— Pruning the Peach A. IV. Pearson. 214 



Grapes for Everybody E. P. Powell. 214 



Babianas IV. E. Endicott. 214 



Bertolonias W. H. Taplin. 215 



Hardy Plants for Cut Flowers— II E. O. Orpet. 215 



Notes on Wild Flowers F. H. Horsford. 216 



Orchid Notes IV. IV. 216 



Heuchera sanguinea, Gromwell, Lenten Roses, Hydrangeas H. 216 



Seasonable Hints, The Flower Garden P. O. 217 



Correspondence: — The Noxious Primrose M. Barker. 217 



Nepenthes and a Gardeners' Problem IV. Watson. 217 



The Study of Botany IV. G. R. 218 



Hardy Plants at Passaic, N.J G. 218 



Recent Publications 218 



Periodical Literature 219 



Recent Plant Portraits , 219 



Notes 220 



Illustrations : — Ligustrum Sinense, Fig. 36 213 



Bridge at Topsfield, Massachusetts 215 



Legislation for the Adirondacks. 



THE Legislature of this state, which is soon to adjourn, 

 has enacted three or four laws which ought to prove 

 of distinct and permanent advantage to the Adirondack 

 forests, and it has failed to pass certain other laws which 

 are imperatively demanded if the safety of the forests is to 

 be assured. Railroads are most to be dreaded as agents of 

 swift and certain devastation. Every new line which 

 penetrates the woods means remediless ruin as far as it 

 goes, and the first duty of the law-making power toward 

 the forest is to prevent the laying of another foot of track 

 on the State Reservation. Existing charters cannot be re- 

 voked, but the authority now resting with the Commis- 

 sioners of the Land Office to grant to railroad companies 

 land belonging to the people of the state should be re- 

 stricted; and the failure of the bill exempting from this 

 provision of the General Railroad Act the lands included 

 in the Forest Preserve is a calamity. 



On the other hand, convictions for trespass on the state 

 lands have been made more practicable by the Change of 

 Venue Act, which authorizes a trial where it may be pos- 

 sible to secure jurors who have not been educated in the 

 belief that the state has no right to protect its own forest- 

 property. The amendment now pending, with good pros- 

 pect of passage, in regard to the cancellation of sales by 

 reason of occupancy, which shifts the duty of giving no- 

 tice from the state to the claimant, will be of great assist- 

 ance in quieting the title to lands which of right vests in 

 the state. The act appropriating $25,000 for the purchase 

 of lands by the state is important as establishing a policy. 

 The amount named will buy but little land, but it recog- 

 nizes the principle that absolute ownership on the part of 

 the state gives the only assurance of a proper administra- 

 tion of the forest-region. But perhaps the most important 

 step taken was the enactment of the concurrent resolution 

 directing the Forest Commission to investigate the advisa- 

 bility of establishing a State Park to contain some three 

 million acres, embracing the head waters of all the streams 



of consequence which take their rise in the wilderness. 

 The report which is to be made to the next Legislature is 

 to include an estimate of the probable cost of the land, with 

 suggestions as to the proper boundaries of the park and a 

 discussion as to its various local features, with reference to 

 their value for this special use. 



Of course this does not commit the state to the policy of 

 buying the lands now in private hands which it will be 

 necessary to acquire if a compact area of the size contem- 

 plated is secured. But it does show a readiness to con- 

 sider the question with a full appreciation of the fact that 

 to carry out the project will cost millions of dollars. Many 

 of the questions to be answered are puzzling enough. If 

 the scheme is considered advisable, will it be more pru- 

 dent for the state to go into the market as a buyer or to 

 condemn the land and trust a commission to fix its value? 

 Will it be better to insist on taking all the land as it is, or 

 to pay a lower price for some and allow the removal of its 

 marketable Spruce, say, under certain restrictions ? Scores 

 of questions like these will obtrude themselves upon the 

 Commissioners, and even if they could command the help 

 of skilled subordinates in making the needed surveys and 

 investigations they will be obliged to keep steadily at work 

 throughout the year if a report is prepared which treats the 

 matters involved with adequate thoroughness. 



Our own belief is that the land should be bought, and 

 that it never can be bought to so good advantage as it can 

 to-day. The difficulties in the way of the purchase are 

 almost appalling, but they will grow more serious every 

 year. The entire tract could have been bought for a song 

 when the Commission with Horatio Seymour at its head 

 reported on its condition, and every one now sees that it 

 would have been a wise investment for the state. If the 

 proposed purchase is now abandoned there is little doubt 

 that the people of the state in after years will look back 

 to this failure as another lost opportunity. 



The following paragraph appeared last week in the Bos- 

 ton Herald. 



Monday afternoon, Thomas Coughlin, living on the Tower 

 road, Lincoln, started a brush fire near his place, and, the wind 

 shifting, his barn was destroyed with its contents, entailing a 

 loss of $1,500. The fire continued through the woods, and 

 yesterday afternoon reached the dwelling of Michael Leahy, 

 on the same road, destroying it ; loss, $4,000. Last evening 

 the fire was still raging furiously, and the residents of the 

 town had turned out en masse to fight the flames, which have 

 burned over nearly 300 acres. 



Similar paragraphs appear almost daily at this season of 

 the year in the daily journals published in the Northern 

 States. 



A man thoughtlessly and carelessly sets fire to his brush- 

 heap. He may or may not have selected a proper day for 

 this operation. The wind changes or increases, and before 

 he knows it, almost, his bonfire has extended to a neigh- 

 boring bit of woodland, and once having started, the con- 

 ditions at this season of the year being particularly favor- 

 able for the spread of fires in the woods, a great confla- 

 gration is generally the result. It is folly to expect people 

 to improve their woodlands or to hold forest-property as 

 long as such property is subjected to unrestrained burning at 

 the hands of irresponsible people. The lumbermen's 

 adage that "no forest is safe until it is cut down" will hold 

 until the public is willing to afford some protection to prop- 

 erty of this character. It is not easy to see why one man 

 should be allowed to jeopardize his neighbor's property and 

 another should be restrained from doing so. This com- 

 munity would not hold that a resident of Fifth Avenue 

 who should be restrained from building a big bonfire on a 

 windy day in his back yard would suffer injustice, and yet 

 his fire would not be a greater menace to his neighbors' 

 property than the fire of a farmer burning his brush-pile. 

 There can be no security of forest property in the Eastern 

 and Northern States until laws are passed regulating within 

 proper limits the setting of brush fires by individuals on . 



