October 29, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



53i 



grove. Out along some narrow ravine or draw leading 

 down from (he bluffs the trees push their way, year after 

 year, where fires have failed to reach them. Then comes a 

 wet season, with an unusual growth of Grass, a dry day, with 

 the wind in just the right direction, and the fire sweeps down, 

 deadening the young growth back nearly to former limits. 

 But the sturdy roots are left alive, and the contest is renewed 

 (ill, at length, the trees overshadow and drive out the Grass, 

 and so deprive the fire of fuel. 



With the general settlement of the country came the steam 

 saw-mill and the demand for all grades of native lumber, as 

 well as for thousands of loads of stove-wood. Many of the 

 owners of timbered lands, reckless of the future, sold their 

 trees till not a valuable stick was left. The trees that stood 

 upon the land of a non-resident or upon state or school lands 

 were chopped and plundered by day and by night. Cases 

 could be cited in some of the western counties where a fine 

 growth of Red Cedars was so completely cleared from the 

 bluffs that neither stumps nor roots now remain in the chalky 

 declivities to giveahintof the verdure that once covered them. 

 Kansas pioneers dealt with the scanty growth of timber they 

 found with the same reckless disregard for the future which 

 led to the extermination of the White Pine farther east. Those 

 who settled first and secured timbered claims had more than 

 enough wood for their needs; the prairie homesteader had none. 

 It is perhaps not just or consistent to blame too severely these 

 early pioneers who came to the state often with little besides 

 the team and wagon which brought them. With the nearest 

 railroad station fifty or a hundred miles away, where Pine-lum- 

 ber of poor quality could be had only at enormous prices, it 

 was natural that as much as possible of the native timber 

 should be turned to account. But there is a waste and de- 

 struction of young timber taking place to-day against which 

 the warning voice cannot be too earnestly raised. It may 

 sound strange to speak of clearing timber land in Kansas, yet 

 it is a fact that within a single county, during the past few 

 years, many acres of thrifty young timber have been chopped 

 and placed on the market as stove-wood or fence-posts. 

 I have seen scores of young Black Walnut-trees, not thirty 

 years old, split into rails and fence-posts, without a thought on 

 the part of the owner that the supply of merchantable Walnut- 

 lumber in the east and south is nearly exhausted, and that he 

 was clearing the ground of trees which would be of great 

 value to his children. A slaughter like this is often made to 

 secure one more field for Corn or Wheat, and this by a man 

 who has already more acres under the plow than he can 

 bring to one-half of their productive capacity. 



In spite of much chopping and a great deal of abuse, the 

 timbered area of Kansas is probably greater than it was thirty 

 years ago, though the number of trees that would afford 

 profitable saw-logs is comparatively small. Where a wise fore- 

 sight has been exercised we find valuable varieties which will 

 soon do to draw upon for lumber. Oak and Walnut spring- 

 up readily where older trees of those sorts are established to 

 furnish the seed. The Green Ash soon gains a footing on moist 

 land and makes a rapid growth while young. Several species 

 of Hickory spring quickly into valuable groves in the more 

 eastern portion of the state. In fact, wherever trees have ob- 

 tained a hold there is abundant encouragement for the man 

 who will protect them and give them a chance. 



When the farmers who own the timbered lands make it a 

 rule to cut only mature trees or crowded and imperfect ones, 

 except when needed for special use, thinning judiciously and 

 preserving with care every young tree of a valuable variety ; 

 when timber-lands are as carefully guarded from fires as the 

 stock-yards and stables, and when cattle are not allowed to 

 tramp out the young seedlings for the sake of the scanty pas- 

 turage furnished by the woodland, the value and profit of Kan- 

 sas forests will steadily increase. 



We need not expect to see Kansas lumber quoted in the 

 great markets of the nation, but we may see many domestic 

 wants supplied by it in the way of fuel, fencing, and of the ever 

 needful material for buildings and implements upon the farm, 

 at a time when the hardwood forests of the southern states 

 are no longer sold at the Government price per acre, and 

 when the manufacturer's supplies of hardwood lumber will 

 be more difficult to obtain than they are at present. The 

 commercial value of this young timber is not its only 

 importance. The benefits to be derived from a dense growth 

 of trees and underbrush on the low bench-lands of our rapid 

 streams, in checking the force and destructiveness of floods, 

 is beyond computation. When the uplands were covered only 

 with Buffalo Grass, which was burned off every year, ami the 

 draws and water-courses were destitute of a tree or shrub to 

 check the force of the current when it left the channel, 



the suddenness with which an unimportant branch assumed 

 the proportions of a navigable river can only be appreciated 

 by a man who has been on the wrong side of one of them 

 at nightfall, or who has, perhaps, seen his team washed down 

 the boiling current while he was glad to cling to a friendly 

 Elm-top and wait for the Hood to run down. The replacing 

 of Buffalo Grass by coarser and ranker varieties, the more 

 ready absorption of moisture by cultivated fields, and the hold- 

 ing in check of the swollen torrent by the increased growth 

 of trees and shrubs along the banks, have all tended to reduce 

 the suddenness and destructiveness of the floods with which 

 the early settler was so familiar. As a further indication of 

 change for the better there arc now many streams which flow 

 nine months in the year where there were formerly dry chan- 

 nels except after heavy rains. 



The future of Kansas forests must rest with Kansas farmers. 

 Give the trees protection from fire and stock, with a little 

 timely thinning and pruning ; cut them as they reach maturity, 

 and provide the way for others to take their places, and the 

 woodlands will grow continually more valuable and yield a re- 

 turn as safe and sure as the best plowed fields. 



Agricultural College, Manhattan, Kan. S. C. MaSOll. 



Recent Publications. 



The Art and Practice of Landscape-Gardening, by Henry 

 Ernest Milner, F.L.S., Assoc. M. Inst. C. E. With Plans and 

 Illustrations. London, 1890. Quarto. 



The author of this book is an English landscape-gardener of 

 experience, having begun his work as colleague of his father, 

 Edward Milner, who was associated with Sir Joseph Paxton 

 during his later years in all the works he then carried out. 

 That Mr. Henry Milner's own tasks have been varied and im- 

 portant is shown by the references and illustrations in this 

 book, which speak of large private places conceived and 

 carried out by him on the continent as well as in England, and 

 also of public gardens and cemeteries. The book is well 

 written and handsomely printed ; the plans are large in scale 

 and printed in colors ; and if the etched views had been as 

 good in their way nothing but praise could be given to the 

 externals of the volume. The text deals partly with general 

 principles of taste as concerned with the different problems 

 of the art and partly with the practical treatment of such 

 problems. 



The purely aesthetic chapters will, perhaps, do nothing to 

 modify or enlarge the opinions or tastes of those already fanhliar 

 with standard works on landscape-gardening, but they will 

 give sound guidance to a beginner, and here and there we 

 come across a passage where a familiar truth is particularly 

 well expressed. For example, every one knows the generic 

 difference between the formal gardening of Renaissance times 

 and the " natural " or landscape method of treatment which 

 developed in the eighteenth century. But this difference is 

 freshly impressed upon the reader when he is shown that, 

 while the later aim has been to simulate in a measure the 

 aspect of untutored Nature — to bring, as has elsewhere been 

 said, the country into the garden — the older ideal was to lay 

 out the garden "for utility or for pleasure, with a purpose of 

 distinguishing it from the surrounding scenery." Regularity 

 and order then "contrasted with Nature's aspect outside," 

 while to-day a carefully calculated irregularity and variety are 

 made to harmonize with this aspect. Of course, the author's 

 preference is in general for the modern naturalistic style, but 

 it is agreeable to find how clearly he recognizes the claims of 

 architectonic designing in certain places and cases. As in 

 every other art, the mode of the day is apt, in gardening, to 

 impose itself so strongly on the artist's mind and taste that he 

 can see no good in any other mode, and instead of an en- 

 lightened adherent of the style he prefers, he becomes its un- 

 reasoning, and, therefore, often mistaken advocate. Thus, in 

 this country as in England (and even on the continent, where 

 one might anticipate a clearer recognition of the perennial 

 claims of architectonic designing), we see constant errors in 

 the treatment of small surfaces of ground and the arrangement 

 of the areas close to dignified buildings. Tiny rectangular 

 yards are laid out with a futile, trivial effort to obtain a "land- 

 scape effect," and palatial homes and public structures arc 

 made to look as though they had been casually dropped down 

 on a bit of untouched ground, among trees, shrubs and grassy 

 spaces where the presence of architectural factors had not been 

 anticipated. From errors of this sort Mr. Milner's words should 

 free the mind of any neophyte in the practice of his art. He 

 perpetually insists upon the elemental fact that a large house 

 should be supported, and its dignity and the beauty of its lines 

 increased, by the arrangement of the levels and the planting 



