October i, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



473 



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, OCTOBER 1, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— Forest-Fires.— Save the Wild Flowers 473 



A Stone Bridge in Wales. (With illustration.) 474 



A Classification of American Grapes T. V. Munson. 474 



Drought-enduring Trees Professor J. L. Budd. 475 



New or Little Known Plants :— Rosa Watsoniana. (With figure.) C. S. S. 476 



New Orchids R- A. Rolfe. 476 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 477 



Cultural Department :— Bulbs for the Greenhouse E. O. O. 478 



Palm Notes IV. ff. Taplin. 479 



The Water-Garden J. N r . Gerard. 480 



Bulbs from the Pacific Coast F.H. Horsford. 480 



The Celerv Blight Professor Byron D. Halsted. 481 



Planting Daffodils C. Wolley Dod. 481 



Aster Novae Anglire 0. 481 



Inula graiidiflora, Delphinium Zalil, Ostrowskva magnifica, 



Max Leichtlin. 481 



Japanese Anemones T. D. H. 481 



"Clematis paniculata 7- 482 



Correspondence : — Home Experimental Gardens E. P. Powell. 482 



Shirley Poppies B. 482 



The Fay Currant S. V. C. 482 



Recent Publications 4 82 



Notes 484 



Illustrations :— Rosa Watsoniana, Fig. 59 , 477 



A Stone Bridge in Wales 479 



Forest-Fires. 



A RECENT Washington dispatch announces that a bill 

 to protect the trees on Government land from de- 

 struction by fire has been occupying the attention of the 

 Senate. It certainly is high time that Congress should 

 take some action in this regard, especially since the season 

 is at hand when conflagrations in these forests on the pub- 

 lic domain are most common. The law simply provides 

 that any person who shall maliciously or negligently set 

 on fire any woods, underbrush or prairie on the public 

 lands of the United States, or who shall suffer any fire 

 which he may have lighted on other lands to pass there- 

 from to the public lands, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, 

 and upon conviction in the District Court of the United 

 States shall be fined a sum not more than three times the 

 value of the property destroyed or injured, or imprisoned 

 for a term not more than three years, or both. When this 

 bill or a similar one was up for discussion a few months 

 ago its constitutionality was questioned on the ground that 

 the General GoA^ernment had no authority to create any 

 offense in a given state except on lands where it has ex- 

 clusive jurisdiction. In other words, the United States has 

 no more right to say that it is a criminal offense to burn 

 timber in a given state than it has to say what shall be lar- 

 ceny or other misdemeanor on the public lands in the 

 same state. Of course this denies to the Government the 

 right of protecting its own property, and it is plain that 

 common sense legislators, if they ore in earnest about the 

 matter, can devise some enactment which the courts will 

 recognize as authoritative. The real obstruction which 

 stands between these incendiaries and punishment will be, 

 as it has been in the past, a lack of intelligent interest on 

 the part of the people and of a strong public opinion be- 

 hind any law to insure its enforcement. Until that opinion 

 develops laws will be of little value, but if the time 

 comes when the people of the country realize the value of 

 its forests and their personal interest in them as a part of 

 their inheritance, there will be no difficulty in making laws 

 whose constitutionality will not be questioned by even the 

 most strict constructionist. 



In the civilized portions of Europe there is no longer any 

 serious danger from forest-iircs, because every one hastens 

 to extinguish them as soon as they are started, and the 

 Government can call out the whole force of the country to 

 assist. But in less highly organized society the forests 

 suffer from fire exactly as they do on our western frontier. 

 From a recent number of Akhbar, a daily journal of Algeria, 

 we learn that the Arabs are hardly more civilized than our 

 own citizens. Half a column is filled with the record of a 

 score of forest-fires all raging at once in different parts of 

 the country. In one place 800 acres of Cork Oaks are 

 swept away. Not far from this 5,000 acres more have been 

 devastated. In an adjacent district 3,800 acres of forest are 

 burning, and the woods of the entire province of Constan- 

 tine are said to be in flames. There is nothing novel in 

 these sweeping conflagrations. The Arab, like our own 

 herder, sets fire to the brushwood either to make a clearing 

 or to encourage forest-pasturage for his flocks and improve 

 his hunting grounds. In 1865 a single fire lighted by a 

 shepherd swept over 4,000 acres. In the three years from 

 1884 to 1887 more than 1,000 fires were started, which 

 burned over 300,000 acres, and until these people realize 

 the value of the forests to them the entire 7,500,000 acres 

 of standing timber in Algeria must be threatened; and 

 this means the possible destruction of the most important 

 of the natural sources of wealth 'of the country, to say 

 nothing of its influence upon the climate, and, through the 

 climate, upon agriculture and the general prosperity of the 

 country. Altogether these African Arabs seem to be doing 

 the best they can after their feeble fashion to imitate the 

 robust and exuberant incendiarism of our own people. 



It may not be out of place here to recall the fact that 

 fires sometimes destroy forests which have more than an 

 economic or climatic value. Perhaps no forest in the 

 world is more interesting from historical reminiscences 

 than that which clothes the slopes of the Pentelicus Range 

 and overlooks the City of Athens. These groves are asso- 

 ciated with the familiar names of the great heroes and 

 philosophers and lawgivers who retired to their shade for 

 rest and refreshment, or to enjoy the prospect over the Bay 

 of Marathon and the Attic plain, and they formed the back- 

 ground to some of the most stirring scenes portrayed in 

 the annals of the world. But a few weeks ago a fire broke 

 out on the heights and raged until the magnificent ver- 

 dure of this famous forest was literally turned to ashes. A 

 letter from Athens says that the mountain range now pre- 

 sents a pitiable picture of blackened devastation, with bar- 

 ren sides staring down on the field of Marathon. All of 

 Attica above the capital is in mourning for the loss of this 

 sylvan shade and shelter from the sweeping winds ; and 

 indeed the civilized world must lament the destruction of a 

 forest intimately associated with so many capital events in 

 the history of the Greek nation. 



We have heretofore given expression to the feeling of 

 regret at the threat of extermination which hangs over 

 some of our beautiful wild flowers, or at least at their cer- 

 tain disappearance from places where they have once 

 abounded. It is unavoidable, where important changes 

 are made in the face of the country by drainage or cutting 

 away forests and by burning over clearings, that 

 many indigenous plants will be destroyed. Where land 

 is needed for agricultural use proprietors will not be 

 careful to save Trilliums or Lady's Slippers, but it does 

 seem cruel for collectors to gather so many of these plants 

 to sell that they are practically eradicated from locali- 

 ties where they once bloomed in profusion. Other offenders 

 in this respect are certain botanists who gather rare plants 

 for specimens because they are rare. But the most serious 

 attack of all comes from the thoughtless gatherers of flow- 

 ers, who carry away wild flowers by the armful only to 

 throw them away. Wc speak of this now because we have 

 just received a descriptive pamphlet from the Secretary of 

 the American Wild Flower Club, which contains an earnest 

 appeal for the preservation of our native plants. We 



