502 



Garden and Forest. 



[October i6, 1889. 



your Corn or plow under your Strawberries. At any rate, do 

 not be deluded with the notion tliat continually filling in an 

 orchard is profitable. L. H. Bailey. 



Cornell University. 



The Forest. 

 Recent California Forest-Fires. 



TJ'OR nearly six months I have read almost daily accounts of 

 ^ forest-fires in this state. Since the quail-hunters began to 

 shoot over the dry grass and leaves on the hill-sides, the num- 

 ber and extent of these fires has greatly increased. All the 

 great valleys are clouded with smoke, and the fires will proba- 

 bly continue until the rains begin, and that may not be until 

 November. 



To illustrate the extent of these fires I will quote the papers 

 for only three successive days, September i6th, 17th and i8th. 

 Forest-fires were reported on the i6th as in the San Mateo 

 woods, only twenty miles from San Francisco, where a strip 

 of heavy Pine and Redwood timber, fifteen miles long and 

 three miles wide, was devastated before the fire was controlled. 

 In this county at this time there were eight or ten smaller fires 

 in the hills, all doing more or less damage. The same day 

 large forest-fires were reported from the Pineries of San Ber- 

 nardino. In the beautiful Redwoods of northern Sonoma, two 

 fires destroyed 500 acres of Oak and Redwood. A portion of 

 the Madrona and Maple woods, described by me in a recent 

 article in the Garden and Forest, was burned over, and the 

 famous Guerneville forests narrowly escaped. The same day, 

 in southern Sonoma, 1,000 acres of second-growth timber were 

 destroyed. The woodlands on the hills west of Gilroy were 

 burned over, perhaps 2,000 acres in all. Fires were reported 

 in the Ventura forests, where they had raged for a week. The 

 heavy Oak timber near Oakdale was badly damaged. Fires 

 were east, north and west of Shasta and Redding. There were 

 forest-fires in Alameda, Santa Clara, Humboldt and Fresno. 

 Quail-shooting begins in most of the counties September 

 15th, so it is fair to suppose that many of these outbreaks of 

 the i6th were due to the quail-hunters. 



The next day, the 17th, in addition to the fires already noted, 

 extensive conflagrations were reported from Sierra and Nevada 

 Counties, in the Pine-belt. All the middle foot-hill country was 

 said to be "so full of smoke that one could not see over half 

 a mile in any direction." Large fires were raging in Clarke 

 County, Washington, and along the Columbia at Yaquina City. 



On September i8th large fires were reported in southern 

 Oregon, in the Siskiyou region, and in the Pineries of Tehama 

 County and on the borders of Lassen. Almost every day 

 since, items of fires in standing timber have appeared in the 

 local newspapers. Generally the fires start on Government 

 lands and spread to the forests imder private ownership. 

 During the present season nearly the whole area of mountain 

 forests of the state has been threatened, and every few miles 

 fires have actually occurred. Some were accidental, some 

 were kindled purposely, some were the results of criminal 

 carelessness. Hardly three arrests have been made in the 

 whole state. 



A dispatch from Sonoma County attributes the large fires 

 there to the sheep and cattle men, who annually set fire to the 

 woods and sweep away hundreds of acres of young forest, 

 simply for the sake of a scanty growth of grass that follows for 

 a few years on the surface of the "burn." There is a law 

 against it; but there are so many ways of starting fires without 

 detection, that it would take a large patrol system to protect 

 the Government lands. The quail-hunters cause most of the 

 fires, but if the game laws of the state forbade shooting any 

 game in the forests of California until after the first rains they 

 could do no harm. We have always a month or so of warm, 

 clear weather after the first days of rain — a perfect Indian 

 summer period. This should be the quail-hunter's opportu- 

 nity, but it is shooting at the earlier season that ruins our 

 forests. 



The quantity of game that can be grown in the forests here 

 is remarkable. I am inclined to think that the food-value of 

 the steep hill-sides, canons and wilder mountains, left in for- 

 ests, protected against fires, sheep and cattle, and allowed to 

 shelter quail, grouse, pheasants, rabbits, hares, deer, bear and 

 other game of all descriptions, has never been estimated at a 

 sufficiently high figure. Quail at present bring from twenty- 

 five to seventy-five cents a dozen in San Francisco. Put them 

 in refrigerator-cars, and they might be delivered all over the 

 United States. I have no doubt but that the forests are worth 

 more for quail than for sheep. 



There is now talk of a law giving the Supervisors of every 

 county, funds to patrol the forests and arrest careless hunters, 



campers, sheep-herders and others who set fires. But the 

 average county Supervisor is a slow and inefficient person. 

 If all the forest lands left are withdrawn from sale, and protect- 

 ed by a permanent board of trained foresters, and if the hunting 

 season is changed, the chief danger will come from private 

 tracts. The owners of these tracts must be educated to a 

 knowledge of this subject. Many of the mill-owners of the 

 Pacific Coast are men of intelligence and energy who are well 

 aware of the importance of protecting the forests. But all this 

 work takes time, and many of us fear that the regular autum- 

 nal fires will entirely destroy the forests of California long 

 before the public conscience can be aroused. 



While I am closing this letter, telegrams in the daily papers 

 state that the mountains for twenty miles east of Santa Anna 

 " are a seething mass of flames." Three thousand sheep have 

 been burned, the timber and brush is swept off, and 50,000 

 sacks of grain in the valley near the hills will be destroyed, as 

 the fire is descending into the lowlands at many points. Very 

 large fires are again raging in the heavy Redwood forests of 

 Santa Cruz and San Mateo. In some places the owners of 

 small ranches have been forced to abandon everything and 

 hasten to the valley. There is a large fire on Mount Hood, 

 Sonoma County, another at Los Guilicos, a third in the Sierras 

 near Oroville, and a fourth in Waterman canon, San Bernardi- 

 no. In this valley, Santa Clara, within twenty miles of San 

 Francisco, the air is heavy with smoke from fires in the 

 mountains, south, east and west. The upper Sacramento 

 valley, for a hundred miles, is under a thick cloud, and at 

 night the red edges of fires can be seen on the hills of both 

 Coast Range and Sierra. When the wind blows from the right 

 quarter the scent of burning Redwood and Pine is easily dis- 

 tinguished many miles away ; here in Alameda County we 

 can smell the Redwoods which the flames are destroying at 

 San Mateo, fifteen miles distant, in an air-line, across the 

 bay. 

 Niies, California. Charles Howard Shinn. 



Correspondence. 

 On Popular Plant Names. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — Mr. Manning's letter on this subject in your number of 

 September 14th, which has just reached me, opens a quesfion 

 which, though of great importance to us here in Europe, is, I 

 think, of still greater importance in the United States, where 

 gardening is now taking such wonderful strides, and where 

 few, as yet, have learned to appreciate the importance of uni- 

 form and correct nomenclature. The subject has been a good 

 deal discussed with us, and the editor of The Garden, 

 who is, perhaps, the leader of the advocates for English names, 

 has endeavored for years past in his paper to introduce and 

 popularize English names for many plants which ai'e more or 

 less known to gardeners. As far as I can see, however, he is not 

 succeeding ; and I sincerely hope he will not succeed, because 

 if he does, the confusion of names and the difificulty of know- 

 ing what plant people are talking about when they use English 

 names, will be greater than it is now, whilst if we have to use 

 a Latin name after the common one, which is often done in 

 The Garden, we only add to the immense number which have 

 to be remembered. Of course, I would never wish any one 

 to give up talking of Roses, Lilies, Primroses or Violets in a 

 general way, o^" to give up using any local names which are 

 generally used and understood in local parlance. But the 

 vagueness of local names is so great that, in nine cases out of 

 ten, they are useless out of their locality. Perhaps, for in- 

 stance, I want a particular Lily from Oregon, which I learn is 

 called Swamp Lily in some parts of the state, and writing to a set- 

 tler for it, I get, instead, a Camassia. I tell the sender that it 

 is not the right plant, but get for an answer, that " he guesses 

 it is what they call a Swamp Lily in his section." Another 

 instance occurred to me last week. A well known and dis- 

 tinguished gardener, who should have known better, wrote 

 and asked me for a plant of "Spatlum." I had not an idea 

 what he meant, and wrote back that I could not read the word 

 in his letter. Then he wrote to say that he meant Lewisia 

 rediviva. I should have said that if there was a plant whose 

 scientific name was a happy one it was this. For, though it 

 is not always possible to follow the good old rule of giving Latin 

 names which either connect plants with some distinguished 

 explorer, collector or scientist, or indicate some peculiarity of 

 their structure, habit or color, yet it is much more easy to re- 

 member such names than a name like Spatlum, which means 

 absolutely nothing, and, if used anywhere, is, I suppose, an 

 Indian name, which I never heard of in the native country of 



