April 24, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



193 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sakgent. 



ENTERF.D AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — The Care of Small Tracts of Woodland. — Improvement 



in Rural Cemeteries jgj 



Hardy Deciduous Shrubs ig^ 



Tombstones for Rural Cemeteries (with illustrations) 195 



New or Little Known Plants :— New Japanese Chrysanthemum, Wm. H. 



Lincoln {with illustration) A. H. F. 196 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. ig6 



Cultural Department : — Evaporated Sulphur in the Green-House 197 



CaltleyaLawrenceana John Weathers. 200 



Roses for Out-door Planting IV. H. Taplin. 200 



Tulipa Turkestanica. — Puschkinia scilloides. — Chionodoxa Lucili;e. 



Anemone Pennsylvanica E. O. Orfiet. 200 



Spring-Flowering Irises Max LeichtUn. 201 



About Peas W. F. Massey. 201 



Principles of Physiological Botany. XVII Professor George Lincoln Goodale. 201 



Corhespondence ;^Ornamental Trees in California Robert Dow^las. 202 



Recent Publications 203 



Notes 204 



Illustrations: — ^New Japanese Chi-ysanthemum, Wm. H. Lincoln, Fig. 104... 197 

 Tombstones for Rural Cemeteries 198-iqq 



The Care of Small Tracts of Woodland. 



WE have many letters from owners of small tracts of 

 woodland complaining that their trees are dying, 

 that many of them blow down, and that their " woods are 

 running out." The writers wish to know what is the mat- 

 ter, and what they can do to save their wood-lots. We 

 note that most of these inquiries come from men who live 

 in cities, or who have lived there, but who have places 

 in the country which they desire to improve and enjoy, 

 and some of them say that the more care and pains they 

 bestow on their woodlands, the worse appears to be the 

 condition of the trees. That comes pretty near tehing the 

 whole story ; but let us look into the matter a little. 



Nearly every farm of any considerable size should have 

 a due proportion of woodland, a tract where forest condi- 

 tions upon a small scale shall be permanently maintained. 

 The importance of preserving and perpetuating their wood- 

 lots is not, as yet, sufficiently appreciated or understood 

 by the farmers and land-owners of this country. This is, 

 in part, only a special instance or form of a feelino- or 



mental condition which exists widely among our farmers 



that is, a degree of discontent with farming as an occupa- 

 tion and investment, a feeling which leads multitudes of 

 them to desire to escape from agriculture and "do some- 

 thing better." This has resulted from the habit of mio-ra- 

 tion from the older portions of our country to the newer 

 regions of the West, for the sake of richer and cheaper 

 lands, and is reinforced by the restlessness and illusion 

 which are elements of human nature. At present it im- 

 parts to nearly everything connected with the farmino- 

 interest in America a quality of transitoriness and uncer^ 

 tainty, so far as particular persons and their possessions 

 are concerned. A large proportion of our farmers are men 

 who dp not yet heartily accept farming as their occupation 

 •or business, and this uncertainty regarding the permanent 

 ownership and occupancy of farm lands has a bearing 

 upon many things connected with our national interests 

 and civilization. We shall have occasion from time to 

 time to discuss this element and its various effects • at 

 present we merely recognize it as one of the causes of' the 

 prevailing low estimate of the value of farm wood-lots. 



It is encouraging to see any signs of increasing atten- 

 tion to this kind of property, even if, as often happens, the 

 new interest has an injurious or fatal effect. The intelli- 

 gent observation and comparison of facts will lead to wiser 

 methods of treatment. 



The first thing a man from town usually does, when he 

 comes into possession of a place in the country, is to clear 

 out all the underbrush. He says he wishes to be able to 

 see all over his wood-lot. Perhaps the ladies of his family 

 desire to walk about in it, as in a kind of larger door-yard 

 or lawn, and in order that movements and vision may be 

 ■free all the bushes and small, " worthless " trees are re- 

 moved. Let us attend to each point as we go along. If 

 our friend wishes to walk in his woods, to enjoy their 

 beauty, coolness and quiet, why does he not open winding 

 paths through them, leading to the places of greatest in- 

 terest } The first effect of removing the undergrowth, so 

 as to permit an unhindered view of the whole tract of 

 woodland froin every part of it, is greatly to reduce its ap- 

 parent extent, and as a consequence the sense and charm of 

 possession — of ownership — is diminished in the same 

 proportion. 



Let us next note the fact that the removal of the under- 

 growth, and of all barriers to an unlimited view, destroys 

 entirely the eleinent of mystery, of surprise and expec- 

 tancy, the quality which tempts and rewards the explorer, 

 the impression and promise of something still before us 

 and beyond what we can see, which may minister a fresh 

 delight. When one can see all over a tract of woods at 

 once, its beauty, its real attractiveness, has been eliminated 

 — thrust beyond the threshold. It may still be a good 

 place to look away from ; as a mere point of view it may 

 be worthy of resort or possession, if from it one can see 

 distant-wooded hills, or long, upward-stretching mountain 

 slopes with cloud-shadows drifting across them, or far-away 

 gleams of the blue sea. But any beauty or charm which 

 the place may have had in itself, or which might have been 

 developed or created in it by judicious manageinent, has 

 been destroyed, and the woodland thus treated will not 

 afterward have any spell or power to minister to the happi- 

 ness or peace of any human being. 



Why do the trees die, if they are not blown down .? They 

 usually and naturally die because of the increased desicca- 

 tion of the ground about their roots, and the abrupt access 

 of heat and light produced by the destruction of the under- 

 growth. The impoverishment of the soil also contributes 

 to the death of the trees. The undergrowth, while it re- 

 mained, acted as a mulch for all the trees, large and small. 

 It detained the dead leaves until they decomposed where 

 they had fallen. Where forest conditions are maintained 

 the land grows richer perpetually. Now that the under- 

 brush has been destroyed, the fallen leaves are blown away 

 beyond the limits of the land which produced them, and 

 are wasted wholly, or they feed and replenish the soil of 

 another owner. In woods sustained by undergrowth this 

 natural mulch retains the water supplied by rain, and the 

 trees are fed throughout the summer. Now the water 

 mostly runs off at once, and the effect of the heaviest rain 

 lasts but a short time. When trees have nothing to drink 

 they cannot eat, so they die. 



To sum up, the natural conditions which have produced 

 and maintained the trees in these pieces of forest or wood- 

 land have been interfered with and changed to such an 

 extent that the trees inevitably perish. The passion for 

 "improvement" often leads to draining the woodlands, 

 thus hastening the catastrophe. In general, the best way 

 to take care of small pieces of woodland is to let them 

 mostly alone, keeping out all domestic animals, and tak- 

 ing needed precautions against fires. Open paths, of 

 course, wherever they will enhance the interest of the 

 woodlands and increase their charm for lovers of natural 

 beauty. But in most of the settled regions of our coun- 

 try the woods wnW not bear any great increase of sun- 

 light about the roots of the trees, or an}^ considerable 

 change in the natural conditions which produced the for- 



