February 13, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



73 



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, FEBRUARY 13, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — The Soil and National Development. — A Piece of Van- 

 dalism. — The Yellow Poplar Forests of Tennessee. — A Zoological 



Garden for New York , 73 



The Landscape-Gardener ; Charles Eliot. 74 



The Kentucky Coffee-tree (with Illustration) C. S. S. 75 



New or Little Known Plants : — Rosa humilis, var. triloba (with illustration), 



Sereno Watson. 76 



Cultural Department : — Nerines W. Watson. 76 



Tea Rose, The Gem W. 78 



The Green-house D. A. 78 



Orchid Notes F. Goldring. 78 



Plant Notes : — The Origin of the Double-flowered Horse-chestnut, 



George Nicholson. 80 



Principles of Physiological Botany. VII Professor George Lincoln Goodale. 80 



Correspondence: — The Yosemite Valley, H. J.Elwes. 81 



The Tulip Tree in Rhode Island L. W. Russell. 82 



The Burr Oak in North Dakota H. B. Ayres. 82 



Periodical Literature 82 



Recent Plant Portraits 83 



Notes 84 



Catalogues Received t 84 



Illustrations : — Rosa humilis, var. triloba, Fig. 93 77 



The Verplanck Kentucky Coffee-tree, Fig. 94 79 



The Soil and National Development. 



CIVILIZATION means, or should include, foresight, 

 the perception of essential and controlling condi- 

 tions, adaptation of means to indispensable ends, and the 

 defense and preservation of vital national possessions. All 

 wealth is drawn from the earth itself All the means 

 which sustain human life come out of the ground or the 

 sea. The principal source of permanent wealth for this 

 country, and of sustenance for its people, is in its soil 

 No matter how great our mineral wealth may be, or our 

 income from exports of manufactured articles, agricultural 

 success is for us an indispensable condition of national 

 power and permanence. The soil is our most valuable 

 possession, and it is the only one of our important national 

 possessions which is in danger of being seriously and per- 

 manently impaired in value. Under present agricultural 

 methods a great proportion of the soil of this country is be- 

 ing rapidly exhausted of its fertility. 



A large part of our agricultural population is still, to a 

 considerable extent, nomadic, multitudes of farmers ex- 

 pecting to le^ve their land after they get about all they 

 can out of it. They do not regard the land which they 

 now till as a permanent possession. They think they may 

 yet go to some other part of the country and there find 

 better land. Many of them do not wish always to be 

 farmers, but hope to find something better than their pres- 

 ent occupation, a way to make money faster, and with less 

 hard work. The illusory expectation of finding better land 

 somewhere else is a factor in the unsettled and uncertain 

 state of mind of many thousands of farmers regarding their 

 occupation. It should be considered and analyzed by 

 thoughtful men. 



So far as the soil is concerned, most farmers might as 

 well stay where they are. It is their methods which are 

 at fault. Any temporary improvement of individual for- 

 tunes which might result from a migration to newer 

 regions would be at the expense of the impoverishment 

 by which such farmers have destroyed the soil which 



they now wish to leave. But the essential feature in 

 this matter, surpassing all others in importance, is the 

 fact that, compared with the demand for new land, the 

 total possible supply or quantity remaining available in 

 this country is very small. Practically it is already ex- 

 hausted. Considering the vast immigration which we 

 receive, and the increase of our population by birth, the 

 area available for agriculture which still remains unoccu- 

 pied is insignificant. It is not a factor of importance in 

 our agricultural problem. 



Our people cannot all live in cities. If men will not 

 themselves cultivate the soil, they must still eat what is 

 brought out of it, and the subsistence and civilization of 

 the entire population must depend at last upon the fertility 

 of the land. We cannot advance much farther in civiliza- 

 tion, or national development, until the nomadic methods 

 of agriculture by which the soil is now mercilessly ex- 

 hausted and ruined, shall give place to a practical and en- 

 lightened policy which will preserve permanently unim- 

 paired the fertility of cultivated lands. 



When Nature is allowed to retain undisturbed possession 

 of a region she plants it with a crop which reproduces 

 itself forever, and which perpetually augments the fertility 

 of the soil out of which it grows. There is much talk in 

 New England of lands being exhausted and abandoned, 

 and of farms being sold at prices which would not repro- 

 duce the buildings on them. The buildings are sold for 

 less than they cost, and the land is given away. But none 

 of this land should ever have been cleared or cultivated. 

 It should have been kept in forest, and if it had been so 

 kept, M'ould have been more valuable to-day than any of 

 the adjacent cultivated lands. 



One of the most effective agencies in the process of 

 eliminating all fertility from land is excessive pasturage. 

 Unless there is a radical change in agricultural methods, it 

 Mali only be a very short time in the life of the nation 

 until many millions of acres will be so exhausted that the 

 soil will yield no return for agricultural labor. Popula- 

 tion will begin to press closely upon the means of subsist- 

 ence in large regions of our country. These are not 

 remote or merely possible evils. They are already real 

 dangers, which threaten us with a speedy culmination of 

 our prosperity, and with arrest of our national develop- 

 ment. The process of the exhaustion of the soil of the 

 country will not only limit our national expansion in 

 wealth and power, in character and genius, but will 

 change the type of our civilization, and the development 

 of conditions analogous to serfdom will be as inevitable 

 as " the process of the suns." The most important 

 changes in human history are often produced by the 

 gradual and unobserved shifting of forces, of the very 

 existence of which the mass of men are unaware. 



A Piece of Vandalism. 



THE press of New England has recently called the 

 attention of the public to the destruction of a ven- 

 erable Oak tree growing in the town of Woodbridge, near 

 New Haven, in Connecticut. The tree was a very famous 

 one, widely known throughout the state, and a familiar 

 and valued landmark for the navigators of Long Island 

 Sound. The following notes with regard to this tree have 

 been furnished by Professor D. C. Eaton, of Yale College, 

 and in a future issue we hope to publish its portrait : 



A large party of New Haven and Woodbridge people 

 gathered under the Oak on Friday, October 13th, 1882, to 

 celebrate its venerable age. There Avere speeches by Ex- 

 Governor English, Hon. N. D. Sperry (a native of Woodbridge), 

 Rev. Mr. Marvin, of Woodbridge ; Rev. Dr. Todd, of New 

 Haven; Judge Pardee and a few others (myself inckided). 

 The opinion was freely expressed that the tree was at least a 

 thousand years old. I found a branch four and a iialf inches 

 thick which had been sawed off, high up the tree, and on this 

 branch I counted eighty-nine rings. Tlie girth of the tree at 

 five feet from the ground was twenty-two feet, at one foot 

 from the ground twenty-seven feet ; the diameter, therefore, 



