July 17, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



345 



an opportunity to fully develop, and insures plenty of good 

 flowers. We plant six inches deep, cover the bulbs with 

 two inches of soil, then give a sprinkling of manure and fill in 

 the soil. If the manure is brought in immediate contact with 

 the bulbs they are liable to rot. By adopting the above plan 

 we find the rains provide the young roots with the full bene- 

 fit of the manure used. This remark applies also to most of 

 the Lilies, for which many ])eople are averse to use manure ; 

 we find, however, that the main feeders of the Lilies are the 

 roots produced between the surface of the soil and the top of 

 the bulb. ,7 n n J, , 



Passaic. N. J. ' A. O. Orpet. 



Orchard Notes. — During July many fruit-trees can be budded. 

 A strong bud, if it takes well, is as good as a graft. Just as the 

 longitudinal growth stops is about the time to bud, although 

 the operation can be successfully performed at any time before 

 the sap ceases to flow. 



Sometimes the work of looking for borers about the base of 

 fruit-trees is forgotten. The first inspection should have been 

 made earlier than this, and a later one should follow. A keen- 

 pointed knife and a piece of stiff wire will now dislodge the 

 grubs. Cherries budded on Mahaleb stock are failing, largely on 

 account of the borer at the root. Purchasers should procure 

 trees worked on the Mazzard. 



Clapp's Favorite is a valued early Pear for family use, but is 

 not greatly prized for market, on account of its lack of keeping 

 qualities. But the fact that its large, beautiful fruit can be 

 gathered in this latitude by the loth of August makes it 

 desirable. 



Germantown, Pa. Joseph MeeJian. 



Recent Publications. 



The Home Acre. By Edward P. Roe. New York : Dodd, 

 Mead & Co. 1889. 



Mr. Roe's " Success with Small Fruits" has long been fa- 

 miliar to thousands of readers, and the present little volume 

 will be found another store-house of useful information, so 

 pleasingly conveyed that it will doubtless instruct and profit 

 many whom more strictly scientific treatises would repel. It 

 is a series of papers, collected from the periodicals where they 

 were issued before Mr. Roe's death, dealing with tlie problems 

 which confront the owners of suburban places. "The area of 

 land purchased in such places," says Mr. Roe, " will depend 

 largely on the desires and purse of the buyer ; but about one acre 

 seems to satisfy the majority of people. This amount is not 

 so great that the business man is burdened with care, nor is 

 its limit so small that he is cramped and thwarted by line 

 fences. If he can give to his bit of Eden but little thought and 

 money he will find that an acre can be so laid out as to entail 

 comparatively small expense .in either the one or the other; 

 if he has the time and taste to make the land his pTayground 

 as well as that of his children, scope is afforded for an almost 

 infinite variety of pleasing labors and interesting experiments." 

 The taking title of the book thus expresses its exact purpose, as 

 giving counsel not to the professional horticulturist but to the 

 amateur with modest funds but a genuine love for out-door 

 work and beauty. Yet it is essentially practical in scope, deal- 

 ing not at all with the culture of flowers, but, in its successive 

 chapters, witii Tree-Planting, Fruit-Trees and Grass, the Gar- 

 den (as a useful rather than an" ornamental spot), the Vineyard 

 and Orchard, the Raspberry, the Currant, Strawberries, and the 

 Kitchen Garden. The advice given with regard to the selec- 

 tion and planting of trees is sound in substance and clearly 

 conveyed. Good counsel of a general sort relates to the pref- 

 erence that should be given to native over foreign species — a 

 preference, of course, which need not mean narrow exclusive- 

 ness, only, when the Norway Spruce is mentioned, we should 

 have been glad had its misuitability to the chmate of our East- 

 ern and Middle States been expressly set forth. Speaking of 

 Grape-ciflture, Mr. Roe insistently recommends tliat, where 

 birds are destructive, songsters should not be shot, but that 

 the bunches should be protected by mosquito-netting bags, as 

 is the constant custom in Germany, or by cheap jjaper-bags 

 with the lower corners cut off to admit of the easy passage of 

 moisture. And, he adds, "clusters ripen better, last longer 

 on the vine and acquire a more exquisite bloom and flavor in 

 this retirement than if exposed to light as well as to birds and 

 wasps. Not the fruit but the foliai;e of the Grape-vine needs 

 the sun." With regard to keeping grapes after they are cut, 

 Mr. Roe says that few of the early so.rts will last long, but that 

 some of the later ones can be preserved a considerable time 

 in boxes stored where the temperature is cool, even and dry, 

 and that "some of die wine-grapes . . . will keep under these 

 conditions almost like winter-apples. One October day I took 



a stone pot of the largest size and put in first a layer of Isa- 

 bella grapes, then a double thickness of straw paper, then 

 alternate layers of grapes and paper, until the pot was full. A 

 cloth was next pasted over the stone cover, so as to make the 

 pot water-tight. The pot was then buried on a dry knoll 

 below the reach of frost and dug up again on New Year's Day. 

 The grapes looked and tasted as it they had just been picked 

 from the vine." 



Correspondence. 



Forests and Civilization. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — We might have had some real forestry here in the State 

 of New York if we had been sufficiently advanced in the art of 

 living; if we had had the interest in .the public welfare and the 

 perception of our obligation to coming generations, which are 

 necessary to the development and persistence of civilization. 

 The entire Adirondack Wilderness should have been held per- 

 manently in the possession of tlie state. Then a real school of 

 forestry could have been established somewhere in the woods, 

 and young men could have been trained in the practice of this 

 art, and they could have been employed in the care of the for- 

 ests and woodlands of other portions of the country. The 

 whole tract of 8,000 square miles was originally heavily 

 wooded. The timber could have been cut oft' as the trees ma- 

 tured, and, of course, should have been so cut oft'. Nothing 

 could be more absurd than the notion that trees should never 

 be utilized or removed. Whenever a tree has come to its best 

 it should be cut down, and its wood applied to some useful 

 purpose, so as to obtam its value, and in order to provide for 

 a succession of generations of trees, and thus for the perma- 

 nent life of the forest. 



If the Adirondack forests had been thus intelligently man- 

 aged and administered they would now have been for a long 

 time yielding an increasing revenue to the people of the state. 

 The whole population would have been greatly benefited by 

 the reduction of taxation. Every man and woman in the state 

 would have been richer to-day — would have had more of the 

 means of subsistence and of comfort and happiness than at 

 present. Every child in the state would have been born to a 

 better inheritance, and into more favorable conditions than 

 now. The forests would have been better now than ever 

 before, and they woifld have gone on increasing in value to 

 the people of the state, with the increasing density of popula- 

 tion, and on account of the exhaustion of the timber-supply in 

 regions fit for agriculture. 



The Adirondack region is not fit for agriciflfui-e. No part of 

 it is suitable for any other than forest-conditions, and these 

 should have been maintained forever. It is indeed impossible 

 to disturb these conditions very extensively, or to remove the 

 forests permanently, -without destroying the region itself and 

 annihilating everything that makes it of any value. I doubt if 

 an instance of more obvious and complete adaptation of a re- 

 gion to a special and particular use can be found in the whole 

 world. Nature made this re.gion for the permanent and ever- 

 lasting growth of forests, and this sole and exclusive adapta- 

 tion .to a most important function should have been recognized. 



As I said years ago,* if the Adirondfick forests could be 

 saved by legislation, one of the best possible measures vrould 

 be "An Act for the Discouragement of Agriculture in the 

 North Woods." The lumber-business is not by any means the 

 only destructive agency at work here. Tens of thousands of 

 acres, entirely unfit for any use but forest-growth, have been 

 stripped of trees, and by cultivation and pasturage have been 

 rendered incapable of reproducing the only crop for which the 

 land ever had any adaptation. It is strange — if anything in 

 human folly is strange — to see so many people persist in the 

 effort to "farm " where the soil is so meagre, and the country 

 so high and cokl, that no profitable retm-n for their labors is 

 possible. The thin film of soil disappears after a few years, 

 leaving only the bare, inert sand or gravel, and as most of the 

 "farming land " here is rolling or hilly, the slopes soon begin 

 to break down and Wash away. Great gullies are formed, 

 which grow wider and deejier every year, till vast waterless 

 tracts of shifting sand, or of clay and gravel, varied only by 

 rock-lcdgcs and boulders, stretch before the unhappy traveler 

 where once grew noble forests fed liy ]ierennial springs. 



I have carefully studied the lives and work of fanners in 

 nearly every part of our country — from the Atlantic to the 

 Pacific coast, and from Canada to Mexico — and I have found 

 nowhere else conditions so forlorn and forl)idtling as iiere in 

 northern New York'. The local histories of the regions ad- 

 joining the Wilderness abound in stories of the hardships of 



* In the New York Tribune. 



