July io, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



325 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY HY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Officf. : 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, JULY 10, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — R,aiIroads and the Adirondack Reservation. — Forests and 



Water-Supply 325 



Some Old American Country-Seats. III. — Belmont (with plan and illus- 

 trations) Charles Eliot. 326 



A New Race of Lilacs V. Letnoine. 326 



Entomological : — Cut-Worms Professor John B. Smith. 328 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Goldring, 328 



Cultural Departmenp: — The Strawberry Season of 1889 E. Williams. 329 



Some Hardy Ferns F. H. Horsford. 330 



Orchid Notes F. Goldring. 331 



Savoys for Winter - \V. F. Massey. 331 



Orchids in New Jersey E. O. Orpet. 331 



Scabiosa Caucasica. — Tridax bicolor, var. rosea. — Border Carnations, 



J. N. Gerard. 332 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum J. 1^2 



Corkespondence ; — Forests and Civilization y. B. Harrison. 333 



The Choice of a "National Flower" Mrs. Schuyler l^an Rensselaer. 333 



Squh-rels and Conifers Geo H Elhuanger. 335 



Rosa multiflora W. IV. C. 335 



The Wisconsin State Park B. S. Hoxie. 335 



Recent Plant Portraits 335 



Notes 336 



Illustrations: — Sketch Plan of Belmont 327 



Belmont 330 



Oak Woods at Belmont 331 



D 



Railroads and the Adirondack Reservation. 



URING the last session of the legislature at Albany 

 a bill was introduced to prevent railroads from cross- 

 ing any of the forest-lands owned by the state. The bill 

 at once met with strongly-organized opposition, was 

 amended so as to destroy its efficiency, and ultimately 

 was killed outright It was evident that some powerful 

 corporations were anxious to get at the hard-wood forests 

 which had hitherto been preserved because they were 

 practically inaccessible. The great bulk of the pine and 

 spruce has been cut already, or is doomed to early 

 removal, because this timber can be floated down the 

 small streams to mills and markets. These conifers, how- 

 ever, form a comparatively small portion of the forest, and 

 if the hard-wood trees were left standing the advantages 

 which the people of the state gain from the forests would 

 still remain. It is true that the waste from the evergreens 

 is too often left in the woods by the lumberman, and this 

 is an invitation to fire, which may consume the standing 

 timber, but it is possible to prevent these conflagrations 

 or to hold them in check. 



But when a railroad penetrates the recesses of a hard- 

 wood forest its destruction is absolutely certain. These 

 roads are often constructed for the avowed purpose of 

 stripping the land of its timber, and stripping it clean. 

 Besides this, they necessarily increase the danger from 

 flres, not only by kindling them with sparks from locomo- 

 tives, but by multiplying the number of loggers, and 

 squatters and hunters, who light camp-fires along their 

 course. That it was railroad interests which killed the 

 bill alluded to, and killed it because they were meditating 

 an immediate invasion of the forest through the state-lands 

 is evident from what has happened since the legislature 

 adjourrted. According to a careful statement in The 

 Tribune, of this city, no less than four railroads — one 

 from the north, one from the south, one from the east, and 

 one from the west — have already begun, or are about to 

 begin, extensions of their lines into the very heart of the 

 Reservation, so as to reach the best blocks of timber which 

 still remain in the North Woods. 



The Northern Adirondack Railroad, which runs south- 



ward to Paul Smith's, is now pushing onward through a 

 region of dense forest to Tupper's Lake. It is built primar- 

 ily as a lumber road, and it means the extinction of this 

 forest. The Carthage & Adirondack Railroad has been ex- 

 tended eastward this summer almost to Cranberry Lake ; 

 and, besides its purpose as a lumber road, its connection 

 with iron works will incite more charcoal-burning, an in- 

 dustry which obliterates every vestige of a tree when it is 

 conducted on the methods prevalent in the Adirondacks. 

 The Delaware & Hudson Canal Company, having recently 

 acquired the Adirondack Railroad, propose, it is said, to 

 extend it northward across the Wilderness to unite with 

 the Northern Adirondack Road. At all events, the exten- 

 sion is now surveyed as far north as Long Lake. Finally, 

 the Chateaugay Railway, coming into the Wilderness from 

 the east is planning to stretch on beyond Saranac, its pres- 

 ent terminus, to Lake Placid. West of Lyon Mountain is 

 a dense, hard-wood forest which is now owned for twenty- 

 four miles by this Chateaugay Company, and through this 

 it is proposed to cut a swath six miles wide, three miles on 

 either side of the track, taking every stick for charcoal, and 

 leaving behind a verdureless desolation. After the charcoal 

 kilns have swallowed up the last available bit of wood, 

 the chips and branches are gathered into heaps about the 

 stumps and fired, until everything inflammable is con- 

 sumed, including the thick mat upon the forest floor, which 

 can only be felted together by the slow processes of 

 Nature carried on through centuries. This means not 

 only death to every green thing, but to every hope of re- 

 newed forest-growth for generations to come. The reason 

 offered for this effacement of all life is that it insures pro- 

 tection to the adjacent forests owned by the same com- 

 pany. Sparks from their locomotives will fall into no tin- 

 der, and tourists will kindle no camp-fires after the char- 

 coal-burners have left the land. The entire strip will be 

 as bare and barren as so many miles of sand upon the 

 sea-coast. 



The only way to protect the Adirondack Woods from being 

 utterly swept from the face of the earth is for the state to 

 acquire the land in fee-simple Something beyond this is, 

 no doubt, essential : an administration which is above the 

 mutations of party politics ; a policy which is adapted not 

 to temporary conditions, but which looks forward to results 

 in the far future; an educated public sentiment which will 

 tolerate no ignorance nor inefliciency in the men who have 

 executive authority over the Reservation and which will 

 insure abundant moral and financial support to worthy 

 officers — but, after all, the state must own the land, and 

 the sooner it begins to acquire a title the better. No doubt 

 it would be wise to begin with moderation — that is, with 

 a comparatively small appropriation and a maximum limit 

 of price per acre. But a beginning should be made, and 

 the public spirit and intelligence of the state should organ- 

 ize itself to enforce a judicious administration of the trust. 



A writer in the London Lancet, in reviewing Mn Henry 

 Gannett's paper, in which the ground was taken that the 

 forests upon the mountain ranges in our westei-n States and 

 Territories had the effect of decreasing the supply of water 

 available for irrigation, and therefore that the sooner they 

 could be wiped out of existence the better it wo-uld be for 

 the country — a view which we have already shown could 

 not be substantiated by any scientific data — says : 



"He (Mr. Gannett) admits that land under tillage retains its 

 moisture better than land not so treated, and that woods 

 equalize temperatures and air currents and act as water res- 

 ervoirs. But some of his divergences from the popular view 

 are surely inadequately reasoned out; for example, that the 

 great superficial area made up by leaves favors evaporation 

 and sends back to the air a lar^'e proportion of the rain which, 

 unintercepted, would go straight to the soil, which is thus im- 

 poverished of its due supply of moisture. To this objection 

 Ebermayer can rejoin that evaporation in the forest is two and 

 a lialf times less than outside it ; nay, Clave nialces it as much 

 as five times less. If we take into account the protective cov- 

 ering of the soil caused by the leaves that have been shed 



