September 25, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



467 



or where forest conditions prevailed, with the rate on areas of 

 equal slope where the forests had been removed, and the tract 

 denuded by fire or pasturage. I went into the woods several 

 times while it was raining heavily, and again after the rain had 

 ceased. I had made similar careful observations here in the 

 Adirondacks many years ago. In both regions I found that 

 on denuded hill-side areas the water descended to the brooks 

 and rivers much more rapidly than where the forests were still 

 standing, or where, if they had been cut off, the forest-floor 

 was still intact. After a heavy rain the denuded areas became 

 dry much sooner than those of similar slope on which forest 

 conditions had been maintained. The rate of descent of the 

 water over hill-side areas of equal slope is in exact proportion 

 to the smoothness and impenetrability of the surface. 



As all the water-sheds of the Pennsylvania mountain forest 

 region have been partially denuded, the floods resulting from 

 unusually heavy rains are certainly somewhat more sudden 

 and disastrous than they would be if forest conditions had 

 been maintained over the whole drainage area. But there 

 were sometimes great floods while the forests were yet un- 

 broken, and there would be now if they covered the whole 

 country as of old. The relation of forest destruction to recent 

 freshets cannot be determined even approximately without 

 much more careful and thorough observation than the matter 

 has yet received. The entire drainage area of a stream, lake, 

 or reservoir would have to be examined with scientific accu- 

 racy, and the proportion of forest areas and of denuded lands 

 ascertained. Such investigations, if conducted by competent 

 men, would probably make plain the necessity for some pro- 

 portion of forest in every large water-shed or drainage area in 

 mountain regions, and the places at which forests would be 

 most needed for the protection of the streams and valleys 

 could also be determined. 



Until the methods of scientific investigation are thus applied 

 to the subject, it can hardly be discussed intelligently or fruit- 

 fully, except in a very general way. Such application of scien- 

 tific methods to the study of forestry subjects in this country 

 would require a considerable advance in thought. While for- 

 estry was wholly a matter of theory for us here, it was neces- 

 sarily only something to talk about, a topic for essays and 

 addresses, and, of course, anybody could talk or write on the 

 importance of the general subject. The method of treatment 

 at this stage was inevitably somewhat vague and sentimental. 

 All the illustrations were drawn from the history of the coun- 

 tries of the old world, and there was a natural tendency to 

 assume that we might adopt the methods and ideas of Euro- 

 pean forestry, and put tliem into operation without taking the 

 trouble to study actual facts and conditions here. This stage 

 of library and office forestry was inevitable, but it was always 

 plain to thoughtful Americans that it was only a stage, a de- 

 gree of progress or advance, and that we should pass beyond 

 it whenever we began to apply the methods of scientific obser- 

 vation to the subject in our own country. 



The fact that our government is a democracy, that all the 

 people pardcipate in it, makes the psychological element the 

 most important factor in this, as in all of our national problems. 

 Everything depends upon the character, intelligence, temper, 

 and degree of civilization of the people. Nothing greatly in 

 advance of these can be done or established here. This is 

 often deplored by men who wish to bring about various special 

 reforms, yet it is not only a natural but a wholesome feature 

 of our national condition and life. No institution which is not 

 the product and expression of our national character can be 

 successfully planted in our soil. If introduced from without, 

 brought hither from alien lands, it could not be made vital or 

 permanent. It would be artificial, parasitic, and of transient 

 duration. The propagation of ideas, after we have the right 

 ideas to propagate, the education of the people by the diffusion 

 of knowledge, thus becomes the chief instrument and means 

 for all that we have to do in this country for the advancement 

 of our civilization, and the permanence of our national life. 

 Many reformers are far too much disposed to rely on legisla- 

 tion and on government action without sufficient attention to 

 the preparation of the public mind for the work of sustaining 

 the laws and aiding in their efficient administration. 



Real knowledge and sound practical judgment regarding 

 forestry interests here can result only from direct, patient, and 

 continuous observation and study of the subject, in all its 

 aspects and relations, as a feature of the life of our own coun- 

 try. The labor and time required to gain such Icnowledge, 

 through familiar acquaintance with the woods and streams of 

 our country, must be paid for. Each of our principal states 

 should have a competent officer or agent, whose work shall 

 be out of doors, not in an office at the state capital, and who 

 shall acquaint himself and the people with the condition of the 



forests and streams of the state, and with their functions and 

 value in all their relations to the life, civilization, and welfare 

 of its inhabitants. 

 Paul Smith's, N. Y. J. B. Harrison, 



Cor. Sec. American Forestry Congress. 



The Potent Pollen of the Navel Orange. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir : The experience of Rev. Lyman Phelps, noted in No. 

 79 of Garden and Forest, will doubtless prove a stumbling- 

 block to those scientists who do not believe in the direct in- 

 fluence of pollen upon the forthcoming fruit. That such a 

 difference of opinion should exist among biologists indicates 

 a terra incognita in the realms of botany as worthy of explora- 

 tion and mapping out as the heart of Africa. 



Discarding the theory of chance, there would seem to be 

 only two ways in which so-called sports can occur— one by 

 atavism, or reappearance of ancestral traits, and the other by 

 the influence of foreign pollen upon the fruit, and through 

 this upon the wood. So what we call sports are generally the 

 freaks of pollenization. 



Perhaps no family of plants is more readily affected in this 

 way than the Citrus, and the infancy of Citrus culture in this 

 coimtry may account for the ignorance of many of our botan- 

 ists respecting phenomena often observed by intelligent and 

 studious Orange growers. The same phenomena are familiar 

 to the Orange and Lemon cultivators of the Old World. A 

 letter from one of them, published several years since in the 

 Florida Dispatch, strongly condems the intermixture of all 

 varieties of Citrus trees in one plantation as tending to pro- 

 duce numbers of unsaleable hybrid fruit. And this caution is 

 given, not as an unestablished hypothesis, but as a fact well 

 known to all. My own experience in Florida, however, would 

 not, from a commercial standpoint, warrant such extreme 

 caution. The venerable Col. Davey, of Orange Mills, Florida, 

 stated that he had sometimes seen perfect lemons on Orange 

 trees, where both had been planted together, and I have seen 

 fruits, closely resembling an orange, produced on Lemon 

 trees. There could be no reappearance of ancestral traits 

 here, and these so-called sports can only be attributed to the 

 pollen, since it is presumable that, had no Lemon trees existed 

 near by, a lemon would never have grown upon an Orange. 



No sweet oranges differ more widely than the Brazilian 

 Navel and the Maltese Blood. Geographically and structu- 

 rally they are, in a measure, the antipodes of each other. If 

 the'pollenization theory be false, then, whenever a Blood or- 

 ange bears the Navel mark, it would internally and externally 

 maintain the characteristics of its kind. Contrary to this, when 

 Navels and Blood varieties are planted together, the Blood 

 oranges bearing the Navel mark are often scarcely distin- 

 guishable in shape, flavor and texture from the Brazilians. 

 How could a Maltese orange be metamorphosed into a Bra- 

 zilian except through the influence of pollen? Wheifwe re- 

 flect also that there are distinct varieties of Navels, and their 

 almost exact counterparts occasionally appear upon other 

 trees, the evidence becomes overwhelming. So much for 

 chance examples — deliberate experiments do but confirm what 

 chance suggests. Rev. Mr. Phelps carefully crossed the Man- 

 darin orange with the Navel. Mandarin oranges of the typi- 

 cal shape appeared with the broad seal of the Navel impressed 

 upon the apex. When Navel trees exist in any considerable 

 number in a grove, the peculiar mark appears freely upon 

 other trees, and I have in mind in my own grove several 

 young trees of a hybrid Mandarin, not a Navel, on which, this 

 year, every fruit is stamped with the broad seal. And yet some 

 microscopists argue a lack of energy in Navel i)ollen, from its 

 often too profuse shedding of bloom, when this pollen is so 

 marvellously prepotent as to leave indubitable traces wher- 

 ever it falls. 



We may go still further and note that not only is the fruit 

 directly affected by foreign pollen, but also the wood of the 

 same growth, in its young state, at least. Some curious hy- 

 brids, in which the traits of both parents were strongly appa- 

 rent, have been created by using buds from this cross-fertil- 

 ized wood. The same jirinciple prevails, perhaps to a Ic-ss 

 extent, among other genera of plants, and variations of Roses, 

 called sports — I think tiie American Banner is one — not un- 

 likely came about in the same way. I have before me an 

 apple, with a broad strijie of deep crimson Baldwin peel, ex- 

 tending from stem to apex, which grew on a McLellan tree 

 planted among a lot of Baldwins. 



Can the doubting Thomases explain how that Baldwin streak 

 came there ? it u u . 



Federal Point, Fia. -C.. Xi. Mart. 



