354 



Garden and Forest. 



[July 23, 1890. 



will come when the mountain-sides of all the Alleghany 

 region, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, will find their most 

 profitable employment in the production of chestnuts for, 

 food. There is no part of the world which is better suited^ 

 for the purpose, or one in which the Chestnut-tree flour- 

 ishes with greater luxuriance. 



The Chestnut-tree, too, produces wood of great value. Ti 

 Chestnut is one of the American woods best able to with- 

 stand the effects of decay when placed in the ground. 

 This makes it one of the best woods for fence-posts, and it 

 has no superior for railroad-ties, for which purpose, espe- 

 cially in New England, it is largely used. It is also used 

 sometimes in cabinet-making. The coarse grain and large 

 open ducts peculiar to this wood unfit it, however, for this 

 purpose, and it is now less generally used than it was 

 formerly in this way or in the construction of dwellings. 



The value of the Chestnut as a timber-tree is increased by 

 the fact that the stumps of cut trees have unusual power of 

 producing shoots which soon form trunks large enough for 

 posts and railway-ties, so that a forest of Chestnut-trees 

 may be cut over every thirty or forty years and continue 

 productive during several generations. The American 

 Chestnut possesses a great deal of value as an ornamental 

 tree. It grows rapidly even in light, porous drift, and soon 

 makes a handsome round-headed specimen. It is very 

 beautiful when it is covered early in July with its showy 

 yellow flowers, whose odor some people find, however, 

 extremely disagreeable. Few insects prey upon its hand- 

 some glossy foliage, and the fruit, which grows and ripens 

 in the short period of about two months and a half, 

 possesses, even in its unimproved condition, considerable 

 money value. 



The Census of this year naturally suggests the subject of 

 the increasing density of population in this country, and it 

 is encouraging to see any disposition to recognize and con- 

 sider difficulties and problems which may arise from this 

 source. Until very recently the people of this country 

 have been unwilling to admit the necessity of foresight or 

 self-restraint in any direction. Wastefulness has been re- 

 garded as an indication of broad and generous qualities, 

 and it has become a prominent feature in the national 

 character. All our possessions have been considered in- 

 exhaustible and have been treated accordingly. We have 

 slaughtered and devastated whatever belonged to the 

 nation, our soil, forests, fish and game, out of mere wanton 

 destructiveness and folly worse than barbaric. 



We shall reap what we have sown. When forest-condi- 

 tions are destroyed on mountains and hills, and the soil has 

 been swept away in consequence, it can never be restored. 

 We live in a world where means and conditions are neces- 

 sary for the production of results, and we might as well at 

 once begin to depend upon calling our food out of the air 

 by magic as to expect that an unlimited population will be 

 able to obtain the means of subsistence from soil of which 

 the fertility is steadily diminishing. 



A recent writer says that the point of the whole matter is 

 that the children of the public schools should be taught the 

 necessity of better cultivation of the land on account of the 

 prospect that in the future population is likely to press 

 upon the means of subsistence. He thinks if this is done 

 we may rest content for the future, because the Anglo- 

 American race has shown itself equal to the solution of all 

 the problems it has ever been called to face. But if the 

 people of this country would begin the practice of such 

 methods of living as are required by the conditions and 

 circumstances of our own time, it would probably have a 

 better effect on the children than any amount of theoretical 

 teaching in the schools. What good will it do to talk to 

 the children about the forestry interests of the future when 

 they see around them every day the prevailing barbarism, 

 the general disregard of the very things which they are 

 told they should attend to when they are grown up? 

 Until our towns begin to treat groves and trees along the 

 roadsides and in other public places in a civilized manner, 



until the different states and the nation adopt a policy of 

 intelligence in dealing with public forest-interests mere 

 italk in the schools about forestry and agriculture would 

 'have little value or vitality. We can hardly hope to escape 

 from the obligation to act sensibly and decently ourselves 

 5 in the present, in our treatment of these great, important 

 'matters, by establishing in the schools instruction regard- 

 ing what should be done in the future. The time for action 

 has already come, and the need for it is pressing. Exam- 

 ple is the best teaching. But it is easier to talk about the 

 duty of another generation than to perform our own. 



The Preservation of Natural Scenery. 



SOME weeks ago we gave an account of a meeting held in 

 Boston to secure the preservation of beautiful and his- 

 torical places in the state of Massachusetts through a board 

 of trustees empowered to acquire real estate which possesses 

 natural attractiveness and historical interest and to hold this 

 free of taxes for public use. Mr. Charles Eliot added a report 

 upon this proposition, which covered the question so thor- 

 oughly that we will do our readers a service by presenting a 

 brief abstract of it. It set out with the assumption that all were 

 agreed upon the value to a crowded community of easily ac- 

 cessible scenes of natural beauty and romantic interest ; that 

 cultivated people had none of that selfish feeling which some- 

 times suggested that it might be preferable to allow a favorite 

 grove or brook-side to be destroyed rather than to help open 

 it to the enjoyment of the "vulgar throng"; that everybody 

 desired to see as many refreshing and interesting spots as pos- 

 sible dedicated to the public enjoyment of our own and future 

 generations. England is strewn with public commons and 

 public forests which are the remnants of ancient royal hunting 

 parks. Moreover, public foot-paths everywhere lead across 

 private land, and many of the grandly wooded estates of the 

 country are open to all who care to enter. Every town has 

 some attractive place of common assemblage, such as the 

 river banks at Lincoln or Durham, the castle grounds at Lud- 

 low or the city walls in Chester. In short, no such problem 

 confronts the people of England as that which faces the men 

 of Massachusetts. Even the French Republic maintains pub- 

 lic forests and the once imperial gardens and palaces with a 

 care which is hardly excelled in imperial Germany. New En- 

 gland once possessed considerable commons, but they have 

 long since been appropriated to private use. 



There is a Public Forest Act which may help to secure large 

 tracts of land for the enjoyment of the people, as it already 

 has done in the city of Lynn, where a wilderness of 1,500 acres 

 has been converted into a Commonwood, and under this act 

 it is hoped that the towns which surround the Middlesex Fells 

 may secure as large a tract as the Lynn Public Forest. But no 

 easy way exists at present by which small bits of natural 

 scenery and single buildings or sites of uncommon interest 

 can be dedicated to public use. These places might be taken 

 by towns under the Park Act, but the government of a Yankee 

 town is not always adapted to the maintenance of trusts which 

 require good taste and permanent policy. The desired result 

 could be reached by a special act of the Legislature as was done 

 in the case of the old South Church in Boston and by the in- 

 habitants of Cazenovia, New York, in order to secure the gorge 

 and falls of the Chittenango. But the necessity for special laws 

 and the organization of special boards discourage and hinder 

 those who have this cause at heart, and, therefore, the plan of a 

 single board of trustees for the whole state was proposed by 

 the committee. 



Scattered throughout the state are thriving historical and anti- 

 quarian societies and other associations which have already 

 saved some memorable places. The Essex Institute has pur- 

 chased a great boulder called the Ship Rock. The Old Colony 

 Natural History Society owns Dighton Rock and the Worcester 

 Natural History Society owns part of the shore of Lake Ouinsi- 

 gamond. If these societies, with all other individuals who 

 may be interested, should make appeal to the Legislature to 

 establish one strong board of trustees, this concerted action 

 would probably bring about the creation of the board; and the 

 existence and action of this board would in turn stimulate local 

 effort for the acquisition of desirable lands. On a similar plan 

 some of the noblest institutions of the state have been main- 

 tained, like the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston 

 Museum of Fine Arts. It may be asked whether the value of 

 natural beauty and historical memorials is sufficiently under- 

 stood in the state to encourage gifts of such a character to the 

 trustees. The value of a hospital is recognized, but is the same 

 true of the love of nature and of the historical past? Thisques- 



