October i6, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



493 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : 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, OCTOBER 16, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles ; — The Forestry Meeting; at Philadelphia. — The Aairon- 

 dack Reservation.— Central Park and the Columbus Exposition. — 



Color in Flowers 49^ 



Holiday Notes in Southern France and Northern \tx\y . .George Nichohon. 494 



Small Burial Grounds. (With illustrations) J. Weidenman. 495 



Notes upon Some North American Trees.— XIV. (With illustration.) 



Professor C. S. Sargetit. 496 



The Bur Oak. (With illustration) C.S S. 497 



Foreign Correspondence ; — London Letter W. Goldring. 497 



Cultural Department: — Rose Notes W. H Taplin. 499 



Richardias W. E. Endicott. a,s)() 



Orchid Notes Jolui Weathers, F. Goldring, D. 499 



Notes on Hardy Plants E. O. Orpet. 501 



Eichornia crassipes F. L. Temple. 501 



Two Good Perennials Max Leichtlin. 501 



Resettingin Peach Orchards Professor L. H. Bailey. 501 



The Forest : — Recent California Forest-fires Charles H. Shinii. 502 



Correspondence :— Popular Plant Names H. J. Ehues. 502 



The City of Oaks W.F. Massey. 503 



Recent Publications - 503 



Notes 504 



Illustrations :— Diagram of a Cemetery in Iowa 495 



Diagram of a Three-acre Cemetery 495 



Pinus latifolia, Fig. 135 49^ 



The Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa), Fig. 136 500 



The Forestry Meeting at Philadelphia. 



ON another page of this issue will be found a vivid pic- 

 ture of the desolating progress of fire through some 

 of the most magnificent timber now standing on this conti- 

 nent. League after league of Pine and Redwood' on the 

 flanks of the Coast Range and the Sierra, the growth of cen- 

 turies, is turned to cinder in a night, and the only record of 

 the loss is a paragraph in some local paper. In spite of the 

 immense value of this timber, and of the incalculable 

 importance of these mountain forests as conservative 

 and vitalizing forces in the economy of nature, the man 

 who flings a blazing torch among them is not counted a 

 criminal, and no one interests himself to check the sweep 

 of the flames. This is what is happening in one state now. 

 All summer long conflagrations, tenfold more destructive, 

 have been raging through the vast stretches of timber in 

 the North-west. Every year, in every state, the flames 

 devour the woods wherever any woods remain. It would 

 hardly be an exaggeration to say that the forest fires kin- 

 dled by the earhest white settlers who landed on this conti- 

 nent have never gone out from that day to this. And fire 

 is but a single agent of devastation. From the turpentine 

 orchards of the South to the logging camps of the North, 

 and even in the wood-lots of the farmer, nothing but waste 

 and improvidence is expected wherever an American car- 

 ries his axe. The pitiful story of a priceless forest inherit- 

 ance recklessly squandered, has been told so often that 

 one is almost ashamed to repeat it. 



And yet, if an association like the American Forestry 

 Congress is to do any effective work, it must be in the face 

 of just such discouraging facts as these. In spite of all the 

 convincing statistics .and arguments so often urged to 

 demonstrate that the nation's welfare, and we could almost 

 say the nation's life, depend upon the preservation of 

 forests, utter apathy prevails where we should reasonably 

 hope for intelligent interest. Only in rare cases has the 

 popular demand been strong enough to compel action by 

 legislatures, state or national, and when laws for the pro- 

 tection of forests have been enacted, public sentiment has 

 been too lifeless to enforce them. The time for missionary 

 work will not be over so long as a thousand square miles 



of timber are consumed in a single year in a state like 

 Pennsylvania. The day will come in this country for the 

 refinements of forest practice, when a congress of skilled 

 foresters will be comparing the results of experiments in 

 natural reforestation and artificial planting, and discuss- 

 ing abstruse problems in mathematics and forest biology. 

 But there is no occasion now for close calculations, so 

 long as the people show by their practice that they do not 

 consider the woods of any value whatever. 



The diffusion of knowledge and the propagation of ideas 

 regarding the necessity of economic forestry are best carried 

 on by voluntary organizations, like the Pennsylvania For- 

 estry Association ; and the joint meeting of this body with 

 the American Forestry Congress this week should be use- 

 ful in promoting clearness of thought and increasing prac- 

 tical co-operation and efficiency among all public spirited 

 people. The papers and discussions at such meetings are 

 important means of arousing and directing popular thought. 

 Unless based on a general and intelligent appreciation of 

 the value of our forests, laws will avail nothing. Scien- 

 tific forestry will find no field of usefulness until the people 

 are educated to feel the need of it. The preparatory work 

 accomplished by these agencies is, therefore, of prime im- 

 portance, and the men and women who are unselfishly 

 devoting themselves to this cause will be gratefully remem- 

 bered hereafter as pioneers in one of the most beneficent 

 movements of modern times. 



A series of letters from the Adirondacks, which lately 

 appeared in the New York Times, presents a most discour- 

 aging picture of the reservation. The writer has not been 

 able to discover in any part of the wilderness south of 

 Mount Marcy that the state forests have the slightest pro- 

 tection against the timber-thief or the bark-stripper. The 

 forest laws are neither obeyed nor respected, and the 

 state officers not only fail to enforce the statutes, but even 

 help others to violate them. The fact that the common- 

 wealth owns a tract seems to invite trespass, because such 

 trespass is difficult to prove, and even when a logger is 

 detected in the very act of taking timber from the state 

 lands, his friends, the town and county officials, make a 

 compromise which is satisfactory to the offender. The 

 game laws, too, are violated in the same free-and-easy 

 fashion, and no one feels any restraint about catching fish 

 or killing deer at any season or in such a manner as may 

 suit his pleasure. Unless this lawless slaughter is checked, 

 the deer will soon be as scarce in the Adirondacks as the 

 moose is in Maine. Altogether the prospect is most 

 gloomy, and without decisive action by the state and the 

 strong assistance of public sentiment, the beautiful scenery 

 and abundant game of the North Woods will be little more 

 than a memory ten years hence. 



The writer does not deal in generalities, however, but 

 cites instance after instance to show how half-grown deer 

 are. murdered, how the lakes are fringed with death by 

 rising water backed up by illegally-constructed dams, how 

 timber from government land is openly bought and sold, 

 and how the constituted guardians of the place are helping 

 to desolate if It is to be hoped that there is a brighter 

 side to this picture. Our own correspondent reported that 

 depredations on state timber-lands were growing less nu- 

 merous and that there was a gathering sentiment among 

 the inhabitants of the region against further desolation by 

 the axe and by fire. Nevertheless, his conclusions, that 

 from three-fourths to four-fifths of the original forest has 

 already been cut off and that hundreds of thousands of 

 acres have been utterly stripped and ruined by the burning 

 and washing away of the soil, are sufficiently depressing. 



What we want are the facts of the case, and it is to be 

 hoped that other papers will follow the example of the 

 Tunes, and make an honest effort to place before the peo- 

 ple the true condition of the North Woods. There ought 

 to be enough public virtue left in the state to make it pos- 

 sible to rescue, for posterity, some remnants of this once 

 priceless possession. 



