July 3, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



313 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Offick : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Mountain Reservoirs and Irrigation. — The Will of the 



Late Professor Reichenbach 313 



A Mountain Meadow (with illustration) 314 



Testing and Introducing New Fruits C. L. Watrous. 314 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter ]V. Goldring. 315 



New or Little Known Plants : — Spircea Van Houttei (with illustration) 316 



Cultural Department: — Cultivation of the Pecan Geo. E. Walsh. 316 



Celery Growing W. F. Massey. 3 16 



Seedling Palms W. H. Tap/in. 317 



Orchid Notes A. Dimmock. 318 



Raspberries B. R. 318 



Manure. — Weeds Profes!.or L. If. Bailey. jiS 



Spira?as O. 318 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum J. 319 



The Forest: — Forest Interests in Pennsylvania. Ill J. B. Han-ison. 320 



Recent Publications 321 



Periodical Literature 322 



Corkespondence: — Unappreciated Trees Alfred H. Peters. 322 



Insensibility to Odors T. B. F. 323 



Temperature and Germination E. Lewis Sturtevnnt, M.D. 323 



Another New Palm E. N. Reasoner. 323 



Recent Plant Portraits 323 



Notes 324 



Illustrations: — Spirjea Van Houttei, Fig. 117 317 



A Meadow on Mount Rainier 319 



Mountain Reservoirs and Irrigation. 



THERE are few subjects connected with the develop- 

 ment of American civilization of more fascinating in- 

 terest than that of irrigation. During all our early history 

 it was "Something to read about," a feature of the life of 

 far lands, oriental and romantic in all its suggestions and 

 associations. There is, of course, plenty of hard and prosaic 

 work in agriculture by irrigation, but there is also much 

 that appeals strongly to the poetic and artistic imagination. 

 The construction of canals and ditches, dams and reser- 

 voirs requires downright, iinmitigable toil. Not many 

 kinds of labor are more severe or exhausting. But there 

 are few spectacles ever beheld by man which are more 

 impressive, or better fitted to awaken "vital feelings of 

 delight," than the transformation, by means of irrigation, of 

 an arid and barren waste into a fruitful and populous land. 

 As the life-giving water invades, conquers and possesses 

 the country its progress is like the march of a triumphant 

 and liberating army, bui there is no death or suffering or 

 destruction in the gentle and pervading flow. It brings 

 verdure, beauty and fruitfulness everywhere, and makes 

 the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. Not many 

 things of which men are capable come nearer the exercise 

 of original creative power than the magical awakening of 

 fertility where all had been inert and lifeless before, by the 

 introduction of water into regions which had before been 

 destitute of it. 



We have great areas of arid land in the south-western 

 part of this continent which can be made extremely pro- 

 ductive, and capable of sustaining a dense population, 

 by means of irrigation. The soil has all the elements of 

 great fertility except watei", and this can be artificially in- 

 troduced and applied in great abundance. The rivers 

 which have their sources in the mountain forests, which 

 now belong to the nation, will supply water for the irriga- 

 tion of vast tracts of arid land, if the water is properly 

 husbanded, and its flow regulated by maintaining the 

 mountain forests which now constitute the natural reser- 

 voirs for the storage of the water which sustains these 

 rivers with equable flow through the whole year. If the 



forests are removed in such a way that they are not repro- 

 duced, that is, if forest-conditions on these mountains are 

 permanently destroyed, the great sponge which now 

 covers them everywhere, composed of root-fibres, leaf- 

 mould and decaying vegetable matter, will be destroyed 

 and washed away. Then the water of the winter rains 

 and snows will rush unobstructed down the smooth 

 slopes, and so much of it will reach the channels of the 

 streams in a short time that enormous floods will be im- 

 mediately produced. The valleys will be ruinously inun- 

 dated, and the fertile lands along the streams will be buried 

 under the debris brought down from the hills. The ex- 

 periment has been tried again and again in many parts of 

 the world, and always with the same consequences. The 

 extinction of the mountain forests results in the destruc- 

 tion of the mountains themselves, and in that of the 

 streams which have their sources in them. 



All this is well known to those who have studied these 

 subjects, and the facts are easily accessible to any who 

 wish to look for thein. But as the work of arousing, 

 enlightening and directing public sentiment so as to pro- 

 vide for the preservation of the mountain forests on our 

 public lands is one of difficulty, some people propose that 

 we shall avoid all this labor by surrendering the forests to 

 extinction, and adopting the comforting notion, that as it is 

 so hard to save them they are not really necessary. It is 

 also to be observed that the splendor of the achievements 

 of inventive and inechanical genius during our own time, 

 seeins to justify the most daring and audacious expectations 

 for the future, and it is not wonderful that men should 

 imagine that nature imposes no limitations which inay not 

 be removed or overcome. Some influential engineers in 

 this country think so highly of their profession and its 

 work that they even propose to disregard and reject the 

 natural provision for guarding the sources and flow of 

 rivers, and to substitute for the mountain forests, which are 

 the natural storage reservoirs, a system of artificial storage 

 reservoirs constructed with walls, dams, and embankments. 

 If this method is ever tried it will result in frequent and 

 ruinous catastrophes. The recent awful tragedy at 

 Johnstown, exhibits the inevitable consequence of all 

 attempts to restrain and control a body and volume of 

 water too great for the capabilities of an artificial structure. 

 If the attempt is made' to substitute the use of artificial 

 storage reservoirs for the natural function of the mountain 

 forests of California, and other similar regions, it will be 

 found that either the dams and embankments must be con- 

 structed with sluice-ways so large as to permit the free pas- 

 sage and escape of the excessive volume of water in the time 

 of great floods, in which case, the reservoirs would be nearly 

 useless, and it would not be worth while to construct them, 

 or, if the plan which is now talked about is carried out, in 

 the construction of reservoirs large enough, really to store 

 and preserve the water of the spring floods, for gradual 

 distribution and use in tiine of drought, the breaking of 

 such embankements is inevitable, and the valley below 

 each reservoir will be fated to sudden desolation, with awful 

 destruction of human life if there are people living in it. 

 Why should we pay so dearly for the knowledge which we 

 shall thus acquire .-^ Why not accept now the lessons which 

 time is sure to teach us.-" The advocates of the destruction 

 of the mountain forests, and of the substitution of artificial 

 storage-reservoirs, admit that such catastrophes will result, 

 as fatalities now attend the running of railway trains. In 

 the question of the preservation or destruction of the 

 mountain forests on the lands belonging to the nation are 

 involved the conditions of the life and welfare of millions 

 of human beings. 



Artificial storage-reservoii"S will of course be necessary in 

 some regions, as part of the provision for adequate and 

 economical irrigation, and if they are properly designed 

 and constructed they can be made successful while forest- 

 conditions are maintained on the mountains and around 

 the sources of the streams. But if the forests are destroyed 

 no artificial structure will restrain the resultine floods. 



