September 17, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



459 



for the dying- year, when they Hare out with their splendid 

 foliage of crimson and orange. Charlock and Hedge Mustard 

 have established themselves over certain areas, and are very 

 brilliant when massed in flower; but the gardeners pass them 

 with an evil eye askance, and sometimes come back with a 

 scythe or hoe. Just now the Compositae are beginning to have 

 their day. The Bonesets, Sunflowers, Asters and Golden 

 Rods are conspicuous. At one point the road is hedged in by 

 a dense mass of the pretty Jewell-weed in full flower, and all 

 mixed and matted by a rank growth of bunch-weed, whose 

 little clustersof white-winged flowers mingle becomingly with 

 the yellow, dangling nectaries of the Balsamine. Such are the 

 more noticeable details of vegetation which we have suc- 

 ceeded in letting alone, and which make of this oft-traveled 

 road, for some of us, a never-ending source of pleasure and 

 interest. Should we hope for as much of a well kept, tidy 

 road-side ? We are encouraged to believe that others are be- 

 ginning to take the view of these weeds that we ourselves 

 take, and still others, alas ! are so indifferent as not even to 

 wish to destroy. This at least gives us hope of saving our 

 wild bank as Nature makes it for us. 

 Baltimore County, Md. B. W. barton. 



Shrubs on Tree Borders. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — The short extract from Gilpin's "Practical Hints," in 

 Garden and Forest of September 3d, page 426, touches a 

 subject of vital importance in the development of landscape 

 effect, which very few people appreciate as it deserves. The 

 opening sentence gives the keynote of what I refer to : 

 "Groups of large trees should be accompanied by shrubs to 

 connect them with the lawn." 



Any one who will look across a meadow or lawn at a line of 

 wood the outer edge of which still retains its fringe of wild 

 shrubbery presenting a mass of foliage impervious to sight 

 from the ground upward, and will then contrast it with the 

 more common case, in which all the shrubbery and low-grow- 

 ing limbs have been cleared, and the eye penetrates perhaps 

 the whole breadth of the wood through a maze of bare trunks, 

 will appreciate the superior beauty of the former. And yet, 

 nine times out of ten, the first work of "improvement" on a 

 new place is to set a gang of laborers to work at grubbing out 

 all the wild shrubbery, and they always begin at the outer edge, 

 where every leaf should be sacred. 



1 have grown tired of hearing the announcement from pro- 

 prietors who seek my aid in developing the beauty of their 

 grounds that they "have had all the underbrush grubbed out, 

 so you'll have no difficulty in seeing through anywhere." 



Many men, who have a genuine love of natural beauty, fail 

 to appreciate this till their attention is called to it, when they 

 acknowledge with surprise that they had never before analyzed 

 the nature of the obviously superior beauty of a mass of fol- 

 iage as compared with an open wood when seen across a 



Minneapolis. &• W- S. Cleveland. 



Recent Publications. 



Report of the Division of Forestry for 1889. By B. E. 

 Fernow. 



It may be that there is an author's edition of the Report of 

 the Chief of the Forestry Division for last year, but we have 

 not seen one. It will be found, however, in the general re- 

 port of the Secretary of Agriculture, and although it is not so 

 long as usual, it contains much important matter, which should 

 be read by every person in the country who has the interests 

 of our forests at heart. If the Forestry Division should ever 

 become an executive department, charged with the manage- 

 ment of the forest-lands which belong to the nation, its duties 

 in that direction would be clear. If, on the other hand, it is to 

 be simply a bureau of information there is a question as to 

 what particular kind of information it should acquire and dis- 

 seminate. With the present appropriation the Department is 

 unable to command the services of competent assistants, and, 

 of course, such systematic work as was outlined in the report 

 two years ago cannot be undertaken. In the absence of 

 adequate facilities the work done by the Department has been 

 in a certain measure desultory, although the investigation 

 concerning the prospects of substituting metal ties tor wooden 

 ones on railroads is considered by Mr. Fernow to be highly 

 satisfactory. The biological studies in regard to timber trees 

 have been carried on, although slow progress has been made 

 for lack of means. Mr. Roth, of Ann Arbor, has furnished a 

 comparative study of the woods of three prominent southern 

 Pines, and these will be printed, together with the monographs 



on the life-history of those trees. The monographs now on 

 hand, and still unpublished, comprise the following species : 

 The White Pine, by Professor S. V. Spalding ; the Norway and 

 Pitch Pines, by Professor William Flint ; the Hemlock, by 

 Professor A. N. Prentiss ; the two Spruces (Picea nigra and 

 P. alba), by Miss Kate Furbish ; the Long-leaf, Short-leaf, Lob- 

 lolly and Cuban Pines, by Dr. Charles Mohr. It is to be hoped 

 that the publication of these studies will not be delayed, as 

 they probably constitute the most valuable work which has 

 been accomplished by the Division during the last three years. 

 They are to be illustrated by wood-cuts of the highest order. 

 Among the other work attempted during this year is a 

 canvass among the railroad managers relating to supplies and 

 prices of wooden ties ; a canvass as to the needs of the cooper- 

 age industry, which uses two hundred and fifty million cubic 

 feet of wood per annum, and the beginning of an investigation 

 of the supply of timber needed for carriage-building ; but the 

 completion of the last inquiry has been deferred on account of 

 lack of funds. Considerable labor was given to preparing 

 an exhibit for the Paris Exposition and making forestry 

 collections for the National Museum. 



Mr. Fernow again points out the perplexities he experiences 

 in distributing according to law "valuable economic tree- 

 seeds and plants." Of course, tree-seeds, as a rule, do not 

 permit of long storage, and must be carefully handled and 

 rapidly disposed of, or they will lose their power of germi- 

 nation. Few people know how to handle the seeds except 

 the kinds most easily grown, while the length of time before 

 a plantlet will grow to a size fit for transplanting wearies the 

 settler's patience. As might be expected, the reports from 

 the seeds and seedling distribution of former years have been 

 most discouraging. 



A compilation which attempts to show the status of the 

 forest-timber culture entries from the reports of the Land 

 Office proves that the results are far from satisfactory. It may 

 be that greater success will be gained from the entries of lat- 

 ter years, because of increased experience and because the 

 timber-claim planting is now often done by contract by per- 

 sons who make a business of it. Yet the consensus of un- 

 biased testimony goes to show that this planting, as a rule, 

 does not produce the results desired and has chiefly been 

 used as a means of speculation in Government lands, either 

 with this design from the outset or as a necessity after a fail- 

 ure to obtain land by timber-planting. Of course, there is 

 some planting of wind-breaks and groves done on homesteads 

 which have succeeded better, but the amount of tree- planting 

 is infinitesimal, when compared with what is necessary to 

 ameliorate the climate, and it may as well be admitted that 

 the reforestation of the plains must be a matter of co-opera- 

 tive enterprise if it is not a national work. 



Under the head of "Proposed Work," Mr. Fernow gives a 

 condensed statement of what he thinks the character of the 

 information should be and how it should be obtained if the 

 Department is to continue simply as a bureau of information. 

 In the first place, the Government needs information as a basis 

 for action relating to its own timber-lands, and to enable it and 

 the general public to appreciate the true relation of the forest- 

 interests of the nation to its economical life. Again, con- 

 sumers of forest-products need information which will help 

 them to use the same economically and advantageously, and 

 finally, the owners of natural woodlands need to know the best 

 method of managing them for reproduction, and forest- 

 planters need to know how to start and cultivate a timber 

 crop. Government action can have no rational basis except 

 carefully obtained and digested statistics, and statistics of for- 

 estry matters are among the most difficult to collect, and yet 

 their collection is all the more desirable because of the diffi- 

 culty of estimating and comparing present supplies and future 

 requirements. But with the present organization of the divi- 

 sion no comprehensive collection of accurate figures can be 

 contemplated, however desirable and urgent such a work may 

 be. Outside of these statistical inquiries there is a wide field 

 for the study of our timber trees in the biological and techni- 

 cal direction. We are by no means certain as to the qualities 

 of our timber trees and their adaptability to forest-uses, and 

 still less do we know upon what conditions of soil and climate 

 these qualities depend. Not only is the engineer and architect 

 interested on this point, but the planter is as well; for he may 

 be led to use a species which, while it may grow well in his 

 locality, does not in the end develop those qualities for which 

 it is most highly prized. We know very little, too, about the 

 life history of limber trees, and this knowledge is the only 

 basis of successful forestry. We have learned much about 

 various trees in the nursery and their requirements for orna- 

 mental planting, but the behavior of these trees in the forest 



