June 18, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



293 



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. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles:— Forests and Irrigation. — The Rapid Settlement of Our 



Arable Lands 293 



American Dried Fruits in Foreign Markets 294 



Parterres in the Park of Saint Germain. (Illustrated.) 294 



Pinus glabra Carl Molir. 295 



Anthracnose or Blight of the Oak Professor Byron D. Halsted. 295 



New or Little Known Plants : — Symphoricarpos occidentalis. (With figure.) 



C. S. S. 296 



Plant Note : — Hardy Trees and Shrubs 296 



Cultural Department: — Raspberries E. P. Powell. 296 



Notes on Trees and Shrubs J. G. Jack. 298 



Notes on American Plants F. H. Horsford. 298 



Hardy Flowers in June T. D. II. 298 



Novelties in Hardy Plants E. O. Orpet. 299 



Odontoglossum maculatum. — Salvia Splendens, Ingenieur Clavenad. — 

 Delphinium Nudicaule, var. Aurantiacum. — Dianthus plumarius 



hyb G. 300 



Abutilons //. 300 



Correspondence : — Gardens for Hardy Plants J. N. G. 300 



Orchids in Flower at Wellesley, Massachusetts A. Dimmock. 301 



The American Association of Nurserymen : — Filteenth Annual Meeting. II 302 



The Relation of Nurserymen to the Forestry Problem B. E. Fernotv. 302 



Science and Practice Thomas Meehan. 303 



Autumn Deliveries of Nursery Stock G. E. Meissner. 303 



Exhibitions : — Massachusetts Horticultural Society 303 



Notes 303 



Illustrations :— Symphoricarpos occidentalis, Fig. 42 297 



Parterres in the Park of Saint Germain 299 



Forests and Irrigation. 



THE article of Major Powell, Director of the United 

 States Geological Survey, in the April number of the 

 Century Magazine, on the forests and arid lands of the west, 

 has failed to attract the attention which the importance of the 

 subject and the position of the writer would seem to warrant. 

 This is due, no doubt, in a certain degree to the fact that 

 the article is in the form of a rhapsody rather than a sus- 

 tained and coherent argument. The serious reader finds it 

 difficult to persuade himself that a man of science with 

 any clear thought on a matter within the scope of his pro- 

 fession would attempt to give it expression in such a 

 tumefied style. There are portions of the article, however, 

 which the ordinary reader can understand, and in some of 

 these he will find rather eccentric deviations from the 

 teachings of experience in all times and countries. It is 

 not a novel notion, for example, that forests help to dry out 

 the earth by pumping up the soil-water with their roots 

 and transpiring it through their leaves. But there are many 

 counteracting agencies which enter into the complex prob- 

 lems involved and the presence of forests on the high lands 

 about the sources of streams has never before been held to 

 be detrimental to their equable flow. Major Powell speaks 

 of researches made by scientific men, whose names he 

 does not divulge, which are said to prove that in the 

 Wasatch Mountains the streams have been increased by 

 cutting off the timber at their sources. This may mean 

 that the water runs off more rapidly and thus aggravates 

 the freshets in their season, and if so it is doubtless true. 

 But that there is any body of experience to justify the strip- 

 ping of timber from our western mountain slopes, in order 

 to help out the water supply of the arid region, few per- 

 sons will believe. Major Powell speaks with some pity of 

 the persons who offer factitious reasons for preserving the 

 woods, but he would not hesitate to begin the active 

 destruction of forests where they never could be replaced, 

 upon a theory which has never been proved valid and which 

 is condemned by every recognized authority on the subject. 

 And who are the men of science on the Wasatch Moun- 



tains or elsewhere who have furnished data for the theory 

 that cutting off the woods is a prudent process, because, 

 with the trees away, the winds will sweep the snow into 

 gullies, where it will melt more slowly and be delivered 

 more equably to the streams below. This is certainly an 

 unsubstantiated hypothesis, to say the least, and to most 

 people it seems like a wild guess. No facts have ever been 

 published to show that the cutting away of forests will be 

 efficient to hold any available water supply in the form of 

 snow-banks ; and yet the restraint which forests offer to 

 drifting snow is presented with apparent seriousness as a 

 reason why a growth of timber in the mountain regions 

 is harmful to the interests of the people in the valleys 

 who depend on the streams for the fertilization of their farms. 



It is small wonder that a man who is so ready to frame 

 an indictment against the woods should repeat the story 

 of his success in exterminating them. Once before, at least, 

 he related it in this city and we then quoted it in these 

 columns. "It was twenty years ago," says Major Powell, 

 "when I kindled a fire at the trunk of a great Pine, and in 

 the chill of the evening gazed at its welcome flame. Soon 

 I saw it mount, climbing the trunk, crawling out along the 

 branches, igniting the rough bark, kindling the cones, and 

 setting tire to the needles, until in a few minutes the great 

 forest-Pine was all one pyramid of flame, which illumined 

 a temple in the wilderness domed by a starless night. 

 Sparks and flakes of fire were borne by the wind to other 

 trees, and the forest was ablaze. On it spread, and the 

 lingering storm came not to extinguish it. Gradually the 

 crackling and roaring of the fire became terrific. Limbs 

 fell with a crash, trees tottered and were thrown prostrate; 

 the noise of falling timber was echoed from rocks and 

 cliffs ; and here, there, everywhere, rolling clouds of smoke 

 were starred with burning cinders. On it swept for miles 

 and scores of miles, from day to day, until more timber 

 was destroyed than has been used by the people of Colo- 

 rado for the last ten years." 



It would be unjust to say that Major Powell writes boast- 

 fully of this feat, but we fail to find any expression of 

 remorse or regret for the destruction of all this sylvan 

 wealth and beauty. No right-minded person can read of 

 it even now without pain. It seems to have been abso- 

 lutely without excuse. Under laws which now exist it 

 would be criminal incendiarism. There is no probability 

 that Major Powell has continued to start conflagrations in 

 the forests of the public domain during the twenty years 

 since the date of this historic fire, but we consider it a mis- 

 fortune that he is still ready to teach that they are likely to 

 prove obstacles to agriculture in the plains below them. 

 Other men eminent in science have considered them the nat- 

 ural mountain reservoirs for storage and distribution. It is 

 easy enough to cut them away or to kindle fires that will 

 destroy them. But in many cases, when once the moun- 

 tains are made bare, they never can be reclad, at least 

 without enormous expense. Dam-building has great fas- 

 cination for an engineer, but there will be ample oppor- 

 tunity to expend millions on artificial reservoirs, and 

 certainly it is not the part of prudence to destroy the for- 

 ests on the doubtful theory that bald peaks will in some 

 way help along the dams. The work of forest-destruction 

 is already going on with a vigor which needs no en- 

 couragement. It seems to us the part of wisdom to use 

 every effort to arrest it. We believe that any rational sys- 

 tem of irrigation will include the preservation of the woods, 

 especially in the places where Major Powell seems to think 

 them obstructive and baneful. 



Recent numbers of Hie Forum and of The Country Gen- 

 tleman have contained articles from Mr. C. Wood Davis, a 

 Kansas farmer, which attempt to show that the arable 

 lands of the public domain have been so rapidly taken for 

 agricultural use during the past twenty years that they will 

 be completely occupied at a much earlier date than has 

 heretofore been deemed possible. The fundamental reason 

 generally given for abandoned farms in the east and 



