October 2, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



479 



melleiis and several Polypori, the canker of Larch-trees, due 

 to Peziza Willkonunii j Pine-bUster, caused by Peridermiuni ; 

 damping-off of seedling-trees, due to /'/%_>'/'c////'/;orrt oninivora, 

 is a simple and clear summary of the researches of R. Hartig, 

 Wolf and others, enriched by notes of observations made by 

 the writer himself. The work is to be recommended to all 

 who wish to obtain a scientific knowledge of the bearings of 

 fungus growth on tree-culture. 



College Botany, iiicbiding Organography, Vegetable Histology , 

 Vegetable Physiology and Vegetable Taxonomy. By Edson S. 

 Bastin, Chicago, G. P. Engelhard & Co., 1889, pp. 451, figs. 579. 



This work is a revised and enlarged edition of the " Ele- 

 ments of Botany," published in 1887. The principal changes 

 consist in the enlargement of the chapters on the use of the 

 microscope and reagents, the revision of the portion on 

 Vegetable Taxonomy, and the addition of a chapter on the 

 " Succession of Vegetable Life." The Thallophytes are in 

 the present edition treated under the head of algae, fungi and 

 lichens, instead of being classified by their mode of reproduc- 

 tion as was the case in the earlier edition. The appearance of 

 a second edition of this work so soon after its original publica- 

 tion indicates that experience has shown it to be well adapted 

 to the class of students who desire a general treatise on 

 botany in a compact form. 



Periodical Literature. 



There is an interesting article on "Floods and Their Causes," 

 by Dr. Felix L. Oswald, in Lippincott' s Magazi7ie for August, in 

 which the conclusions coincide with those which have been 

 so often insisted on in these columns. 



Dr. Oswald says that while men have been disputing about 

 metaphysical subjects, the very basis of organic life has been 

 disappearmg from under their feet ; that for nearly 2,000 years 

 the inhabitable portion of the earth has decreased at the average 

 yearly rate of 3,500 square miles, and that in historical times 

 some 7,000,000 square miles along the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean, once highly fertile, have been changed into worthless 

 deserts. He quotes Mr. Marsh's declaration, that "another 

 era of similar devastations would make the earth an unfit 

 home for its noblest inhabitant, and threaten the depravation, 

 barbarism and, perhaps, the extinction of the human species," 

 and adds that the evil is chiefly due to river-floods produced 

 by the agency of man, and that these floods are caused almost 

 exclusively by the disappearance of arboreal vegetation, and 

 especially by the destruction of the land-protecting highland 

 forests. He thus describes the results : 



" Summer suns scorch the unprotected soil, hot winds ab 

 sorb its last vestige of moisture and fill the air with clouds of 

 loose dust ; the slopes of the naked mountains are torn up into 

 deep ravines, and their mould, carried seaward by every rainy 

 spring, is deposited in the form of festering, miasma-breeding 

 coast-swamps. Springs fail, rivers shrink to feeble streamlets, 

 which, at last, become too shallow even to supply the irriga- 

 tion-canals by which the starving peasants hoped to relieve 

 their distress. And all that misery is aggravated and perpetu- 

 ated by the ever-recurring ravages of the winter floods. The 

 melting snows, now no longer absorbed by the sponge-like 

 carpet of moss and tangled roots, run off the hill-slopes like 

 rain from a tile-covered roof, and by their accumulation tend 

 to deepen the gorges of the rocky ravines, which in a few 

 hours pour down, in a mad waste, the moisture which once 

 supplied the springs of a thousand mountain brooks. Swollen 

 by the turbid floods of countless simultaneous torrents, the 

 lowland rivers roll down vast masses of detritus, and, by the 

 inevitable laws of gravitation, cover the fields of their upper 

 valleys with the heavy particles of that diluvium, sand and 

 coarse gravel, while the fertilizing slime is carried down to 

 add its stimulus to the rank morasses of a malarious delta. 

 Thus shoaled by yearly accumulations of sand-banks the river- 

 beds rise higher and higher above their former channels, and 

 in every spring, when more than usually heavy snows are 

 thawed by sudden rains, the uplands send down a deluge 

 which no dams can resist, and which often in a single hoiu- 

 demolishes barriers which thousands of workmen have reared 

 by the labors of many years. 



"This brief summary outlines an experience which has re- 

 peated itself a thousand times, from the barren slopes of Mount 

 Lebanon to the naked terrace lands of the western Pyrenees, 

 and which will not fail to enforce its terrible lessons on the 

 inhabitants of the western Continent, if the forests of our high- 

 land regions should be surrendered to the land-blighting axe." 



Dr. Oswald believes that deserts can be redeemed only by 



tree-culture. " Dikes are apt to prolong, rather than avert, the 

 mischief of inundations, as the city of Sacramento, California, 

 had a chance to ascertain at its cost; effluent canals degen- 

 erate into morasses, and reservoirs, besides being liable to get 

 shoaled by the accumulation of detritus, constitute a constant 

 menace to the inhabitants of the lower river valley." 



It is good to see the truth of the relations of mountain for- 

 ests to irrigation, and to the fertility of the soil of the country, 

 presented in a popular form. The subject is an important one 

 for the people of the United States, because some influential 

 men who advocate the construction of a vast system of artifi- 

 cial storage reservoirs for irrigating purposes, refuse to recog- 

 nize the value of the mountain forests as natural storage res- 

 ervoirs and distributors of the water supply, and hold that it 

 would be just as well to destroy them entirely. If this is ever 

 done the lesson will be a most costly one, and will be learned 

 too late to be of any avail. 



Correspondence. 

 The Palm-house at Allegheny City Park. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest: 



Sir. — The finest specimens of Banana plants I have overseen 

 are in the Palm-house connected with the park in this city. 

 The house was finished in the fall of 1888 ; the Bananas were 

 planted during the latter part of November. A group of 

 Micsa Sapientum has now six stems, two of which are matur- 

 ing large bunches of fruit. The original stem has just been 

 cut down after ripening a bunch of 100 perfect fruits. The 

 stem, at two feet from the ground, is fourteen inches in diam- 

 eter. The largest plant in the group is twenty-seven feet high, 

 the smallest is twenty-one feet. The spread from outside to 

 outside is twenty-five feet ; the leaf-blades, independent of the 

 petiole, arc eight feet long and twenty-six inches wide, and 

 altogether the effect of the group is magnificent. Specimens 

 of Miisa Cavendishi are ten feet high and as many in width, 

 with leaves a yard wide. A bunch on one plant contains no 

 less than 264 perfect fruits. Let me add that unless one has 

 been fortunate enough to eat a banana that has ripened on the 

 plant he has no idea of what a perfect banana is. There are 

 groups, also, of Mtisa rosacea most beautiful in contour. The 

 general effect of these groups are as tropical as possible. The 

 plants are all set out in deep, rich soil, and are abundantly 

 supplied with water at all seasons. Another plant bearing 

 fruit very freely is the Lyre plant, Philodendron pertusimi or 

 Monstera deliciosa. This is rambling over the rock-work, 

 and is a very characteristic piece of verdure. In the same 

 house is a splendid specimen of Cycas circinalis, spreading 

 eighteen feet and twelve feet in height. This plant, two 

 months since, produced a perfect flower scape, and has now 

 thirty-six new fronds nearly developed. Ficiis itnperialis, a 

 plant with heart-shaped leaves, eighteen inches across, is seen 

 in a specimen twelve feet high and of great beauty. Draccena 

 fragrans towers up twenty feet, and is well furnished to the 

 ground. A Pandanus reflexus, probably the largest plant in the 

 country, is standing on a pedestal three feet from the ground. 

 The leaves touch the ground, and the extreme points are 

 over ten feet high, and the spread of the plant is eight feet. 

 Good examples of the Dove Orchid are in flower, bearing 

 from three to seven spikes, with from twenty to thirty flowers 

 on each. 



The entire group of glass houses here were given to Alle- 

 gheny City by Mr. H. Phipps, Jr.. and are open to the public 

 every day. Mr. W. Hamilton, the superintendent, informs me 

 that as many as 2,000 persons visit the green-houses on Sun- 

 day alone. J. Thorpe. 



Allegheny City. 



Helonias bullata. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — A neighbor took me to see a " new plant" which had 

 been found on his land this spring. It proved to be Helonias 

 biillata. It is growing on the banks of a small mountain 

 stream in the midst of a "Laurel thicket." There are, prob- 

 ably not more than a hundred plants in the lot, and what 

 seems strange to me is that, although I have searched the 

 same stream up and down for miles and all other like situ- 

 ations in this region, I can find no others. 



The location is at an altitude of about 4,000 feet. It is near 

 Short Oft" Mountain, in Macon County, North Carolina. Does 

 any one know that fliis plant has been found in the Alleghany 

 Mountains before ? 



Highlands, N. c. Frank BoyntoH. 



