October 30, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



517 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY IIY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargf.nt. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Tlie Nation's Forests 517 



Holiday Notes in Southern France and Northern Italy. — III., 



George Nicholson. 518 

 The Art of Gardening — An Historical Sketch. XII.— Roman Country- 



Seats ... - Mrs. Schuyler Va7i Rensselaer. 519 



New or Little Known Plants : — The Japanese Flowering Apple. (Illustrated.) 520 

 Entomological: — A Destructive Cornel .Saw fly. (With figure.). ...y. G. Jack. 520 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Goldring. 522 



Cultural Department: — Rot in Iris Germanica Robert T. Jackson. 522 



Plants for Forcing IV. H. Taplbi. 523 



Water Cress under Glass W. H. Bull. 524 



O.-calis E. O. Orpet. 524 



Orch id Notes John Weathers. 524 



The Forest : — The Mountain Forests of Vancouver's Island John Macoun. 525 



Forest Fires in Northern Canada Robert Bell. 525 



Correspondence : — The Lynn Public Forest Sylvester Baxter. 526 



The Disappearance of Wild Flowers W. J. Beal. 527 



Trypeta pomonella in New Jersey E. IVilUams. 527 



The Dwarf Weeping Willow T. H. Hoskins. 527 



Recent Plant Portraits 527 



Notes 528 



Illustrations : — A Cornel Saw-fly (Harpiphorus varianus), Fig. 13S 521 



Japanese Flowering Apple, Fig. 139 523 



The Nation's Forests. 



EARLY in the present year we suggested a plan for the 

 protection and care of the forests situated upon the 

 pubHc domain of the United States, and the property, there- 

 fore, of the people. Our suggestions were widely discussed 

 at the time by the press of the country, and received hearty 

 support and endorsement. They were briefly these : 



First. That the government should at once withdraw, 

 temporarily, from public sale and entry all its lands upon 

 which forests are growing. 



Second. That officers and men should be detailed from 

 the army to protect these forests from fire and theft, as far 

 as it is now practicable to do so, until a permanent forest- 

 organization can be established by the government of the 

 United States. 



Third. That the President of the United States should be 

 authorized to appoint a Commission of enlightened men to 

 study the general forest-problem in all its relations, and to 

 present tc3 Congress a scheme of national forest-control and 

 administration. 



The American Forestry Association, a body of men and 

 women familiar with the requirements of forest-adminis- 

 tration, at its recent meeting in Philadelphia, adopted a 

 resolution, introduced by Mr. B. E. Fernow^ embodying 

 the essential features of our plan, and appointed a com- 

 mittee to urge upon the government the necessity of con- 

 sidering this matter. This action of the Forestry Association 

 is important. It brings the whole subject directly to the 

 attention of the President and of Congress in a way which 

 cannot be overlooked. The fact that a simple and econom- 

 ical plan, approved with hardly an exception by the press 

 of the country, has the unanimous support of those persons 

 who possess special knowledge of our forests, and look at 

 them unselfishly and from a national point of view, marks 

 a decided step forward. It is settled, at least, that there is 

 to be concerted action. But it is only a step. Resolutions 

 will not save forests; nor the wisest utterances of the pi^ess 

 excite Congress to action. A beginning has been made, 

 and a very good one, but it is only a beginning, and the 

 really hard work is yet to be done. There are still serious 



difficulties to overcome before even the most primitive meas- 

 ures of forest-conservancy can be adopted in this country. 

 The great mass of the people of the United States are 

 ignorant of the history, the requirements and the uses of 

 forests ; and are slow, therefore, to respond to appeals 

 made to them for sustained efforts to overcome the indif- 

 ference of Congress. The number of men and women who 

 know that the prosperity of the country is bound up in its for- 

 ests, and who are willing to devote their time, labor and 

 money to the promulgation of this fact, is comparatively 

 not large. They live, for the most part, remote from the 

 forests they would see the government preserve. Their 

 interest in these forests is not a personal interest. These far 

 westei-n forests might perish and there would be no per- 

 ceptible change in the prosperity or in the surroundings of 

 nine-tenths of the people who are now most interested in 

 their preservation. This interest may be a sentimental 

 one, but it is none the less real. It is of that character 

 from which political and economical reforms have sprung, 

 and it is a hopeful and encouraging sign of our national 

 progress that there are men and women in this community 

 who are willing to lend themselves unselfishly to a cause 

 which promises no immediate or personal returns. Opposed 

 to theiTi are men of a very different stamp. These live by 

 despoiling what the others would preserve. They are on 

 the ground ; they live upon the forests. Any action of 

 Congress which would check or control their operations in 

 the forests of the public domain would affect at once their 

 personal interests and prosperity. Among these men are 

 some who buy legitimately timber lands from the govern- 

 ment and turn the timber into money ; others live by pil- 

 laging the timber, either openly or under cover of inadequate 

 _and badly administered laws. Others, like the shepherds 

 and hunters of California, destroy the national forests for 

 the accomplishment of their own selfish purposes. These 

 various interests are well organized ; and the men who live 

 on this accumulated wealth of the nation can afford to pay 

 handsomely to preserve government indifference. They 

 will oppose before Congress, in every way in their power, 

 every effort which can be made to change the laws under 

 which the public lands are administered and disposed of. 

 The opponents of a systein of forest-conservancy in the 

 United States have already shown what they can accom- 

 plish. There was a bill before the last Congress to make 

 certain changes in the laws under which national timber- 

 lands could be disposed of. It proposed to sell the stump- 

 age with certain proper conditions, but not to sell the land. 

 The bill never had the slightest chance. It was killed 

 finally by a member of Congress from Alabama, on the 

 ground that it would work injustice and injury to the peo- 

 ple of his state. The truth was that the people of Alabama 

 and of the neighboring states of Mississippi and Florida 

 had been plundering, in one form or another, the public do- 

 main for years, and that any change of the law would affect 

 seriously the interests of influential citizens. 



It is a difficult matter to oppose successfully all the dif- 

 ferent interests which have come into existence because 

 the government of the United States has allowed its forests 

 to perish rather than to make a serious effort to protect 

 them ; but now that a plan of action has been adopted by 

 the Forestry Congress to which no unselfish opposition 

 can be inade, there is at last something definite to work 

 for. The next step to be taken is to increase the popular 

 knowledge of the forest and of its importance, that Con- 

 gress, influenced by popular demand, may be induced to 

 consider seriously a national system of forest-manage- 

 ment ; and then the matter being once fairly before 

 Congress, a fight must be made between the people on the 

 one side and a well organized and well equipped body of 

 interested men on the other. There is no doubt which 

 side will win in the long run, and there would be no grave 

 apprehension of ultimate success if forests, especially in 

 dry regions like western America, once destroyed could 

 be restored. But in the case of these western forests delay 

 is fatal, and the fact that they may be exterminated before 



