38 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 361. 



was a iong lean-to against the north side of the brick wall of 

 another house. This house in the rear is really an excavation, 

 so much below the level of the house against which it is 

 built that the sun in the winter never shines upon the plants. 

 The earth has been allowed to remain at its original level 

 under the bench on the south side, so as to bring the moist 

 surface close to the plants, and to serve a similar purpose a 

 tank of watere.vtendsunderthe wholelengthof thebenchon the 

 north side, and above this tank there is continuous ventilation. 

 The wall on the south side is really one side of a long cistern 

 in the adjoining house. This also helps to keep the place cool 

 and moist in summer, so that it is pronounced by e.xperts an 

 ideal house for Odontoglossums. It is one hundred and 

 thirty feet long, and it Is filled with plants of Odontoglos- 

 sum crispum, which cover the benches and hang from the 

 roof to the number of si,\ or seven thousand. Of course, 

 these are not yet fairly in bloom, although a few sprays 

 have been cut, but the thriftiness of the plants and the strong 

 shoots, which were covered with buds, gave promise of an 

 extraordinary exhibition in four or five weeks. These flowers 

 will all be sold, and retailers will pay for the sprays according 

 to the number of flowers on them at tjie rate of forty or fifty 

 cents for each single flower. 



Cypripediums continue, as of old, a great specialty here, 

 and all of the standard varieties are grown in great numbers. 

 But besides these and all the choicer varieties, there are three 

 or four thousand seedlings coming on in all stages of devel- 

 opment, from tiny plants which are just visible above the moss 

 to others in full flower. Among the new varieties in bloom 

 I noted C. Sallieri Roeblingii, a cross between C. insigne 

 Amesianum and C. villosum, which shows a fine flower with 

 a wide white margin on a rich chocolate dorsal sepal. C. Hebe 

 purpureum is distinguished by its midrib of deep purple suf- 

 fused with rose. Alcides is another fine plant, the offspring 

 of C. hirtissimum and C. insigne. Near the seedlings is 

 another house shovvy with masses of Ljelia anceps and L. al- 

 bida in flower, and it contained a magnificent variety of Vanda 

 ccerulea in flower. When compared with another variety 

 near it the great spike, which carried something like twenty 

 flowers, seemed to belong to another species. The flowers 

 are larger in every way, the sepals and petals are broader, and 

 the color was a much purer blue. 



A run through the houses on the hillside and the group of 

 twenty on the plain below shows considerable change in the 

 character of the stock from what it was a year or two ago. 

 Many of the specimen Palms and Tree-ferns still make the 

 centre house as shady as a tropical forest ; but, as a rule, the 

 collection is less miscellaneous than it once was, and there is 

 a tendency to grow in quantities plants of standard varieties 

 which are used by florists. Of coarse, there are novelties and 

 rarities and specimen plants, so that the searcher for these 

 things will find what he wants, but they are not so conspicuous 

 a feature of the establishment as they once were, Mr. Pitcher 

 having the idea that, owing to the limited number of amateurs 

 who make collections of choice specimens, this part of the 

 business can more easily be overdone than the growing of 

 Palms, Ferns, Araucarias, Dracaenas and other plants which 

 form the staple of the fiorist's general stock. There is no lack 

 of interest, however, in this part of the establishment, and 

 many visitors would probably consider the houses filled from 

 end to end with well-grown plants of Adiantum Farleyense 

 worth going a journey to see. Certainly, no other plant can 

 equal this Fern for massing, so as to produce effects of almost 

 cloud-like lightness. 



New York. 



Ji. 



Shall we have an Orchid Society ? 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest: 



Sir, — Cypripediums are grown more frequently in American 

 collections than any other members of the Orchid family, and 

 they bid fair to become as popular for decorative purposes 

 liere as they are in Europe. Tlieir flowers show great variety 

 in form and color, and have lasting qualities that are un- 

 equaled. Some Orchids are favorites at once, but the taste 

 for Cypripediums seems to be an acquired one, and one that 

 usually comes after experience with other Orchids. Never- 

 theless, they are already so popular, and the raising of seed- 

 lings has become so general, that questions of nomenclature 

 have become important. If the present ratio of increase here 

 in new varieties continues long, we certainly ought to have 

 some authority recognized on this side of the Atlantic as com- 

 petent to give certificates of merit and stability of names to 

 such seedlings or hybrids as are worthy of perpetuating. 



It seems to be unfair that our growers should be compelled 

 to send material for such judgment to Kew, not only on ac- 



count of the delay, but because of the difficulty in getting the 

 material there in good condition. If we had an Orchid Society 

 established here its certificates would add value to new plants 

 raised here and give authority for naming them. Our growers 

 of seedlings and hybridizers sometimes feel that they do not 

 receive due credit for their work, and this would not be the 

 case if such work were passed upon by a society of recog- 

 nized rank, whose proceedings would be published, copied and 

 spread abroad over all the civilized world. We should know 

 little of the work done by amateur and professional cultiva- 

 tors in Europe were it not for the societies which give awards 

 for this work, and these awards are, as a matter of course, 

 published in horticultural periodicals. It seems evident that 

 an Orchid Society here would do, to a certain extent, for Amer- 

 ican growers what similar organizations in Europe are doing 

 for the producers of new and improved varieties in Cypripe- 

 diums and other Orchids in Old World gardens. 



South Lancaster, Mass. £• O. Or pet. 



The Forest. 



The Consumption of Wood in the Comstock Mines. 



IN no other group of mines in the world have such large 

 quantities of timber and wood for fuel been used as in 

 those on the Comstock lode. The Hon. William Alvord, 

 of San Francisco, California, prepared a paper on the con- 

 sumption of timber and wood in these mines for the meet- 

 ing of the American Forestry Association in 1891, but the 

 paper has never been published. The facts are so interest- 

 ing, how^ever, that we have asked Mr. Alvord to allow us 

 to use such portions of it as would be most interesting to 

 our readers. 



The walls, ore bodies and, generally speaking, the entire 

 formation of this lode are remarkable for want of firmness 

 and tenacity. The friable nature of the ore, which renders its 

 mining comparatively easy without blasting, except to fracture 

 large masses, has a counter disadvantage in requiring an 

 expensive and complete system of timbering in order to make 

 its extraction safe. Again, some of the mines of this lode are, 

 or have been, operated at a depth considerably exceeding 

 3,000 feet. However, the chief reason for using large quan- 

 tities of timber is the great width of veins carrying high-grade 

 ore. On the 1550 level of the Consolidated Virginia mine a 

 vein 330 feet wide lias been worked out clean, and in it and 

 various other mines of the lode, veins ranging from 65 to 200 

 feet wide have been worked out in the same manner. The ore 

 of the vein in the Consolidated Virginia, above referred to, 

 furnished an average yield of $126.00 in silver and gold to the 

 ton. Such ore is too valuable to be utilized for chamber-walls 

 as principal supports, as is done in most of the mines of the 

 world. 



The enormous pressure resulting from the weight of the 

 overlying formation, augmented by the absence of the usual 

 chamber-walls as principal supports, is sustained by an elab- 

 orate network of costly timbering, which has been admired for 

 its completeness, safety and structural strength by many of the 

 most skillful mining engineers of the civilized world. Without 

 vast quantities of massive timbers to keep the walls in place, 

 and corresponding quantities of wood to generate power for 

 pumping out the water, hoisting the ores, reducing and amal- 

 gamating them and retorting at the mills, the great bulk of 

 the precious metals which the Comstock mines have poured 

 into the lap of nations would never have been discovered, and 

 its extraction would have been practically impossible. The 

 constant requisitions of the Comstock mines upon the moun- 

 tain-forests have led to the christening of the lode as "The 

 Tomb of the Sierras." 



When the mines of the Comstock lode were discovered the 

 surrounding mountains were sparsely covered with a growth 

 of scrubby Pines, Pinus edulis, commonly known as the Pinon 

 or Nut Pine, interspersed with a stunted variety of Red Cedar, 

 Juniperus Virginiana. These woods were the most valuable 

 of all for fuel, being hard, resinous and fine-grained, but were 

 worthless for timbers and lumber, being too small. They 

 supplied the wants of the mines during the prospecting and 

 surtace-mining eras and as long as fuel only was wanted, but 

 as soon as any considerable depth was reached the supply was 

 entirely exhausted, and the most easily accessible forests of 

 the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada were encroached upon, 

 and ever since then the forest-line of these mountains has been 

 pushed westward before the axe, until now it is west of the 

 eastern crest of the Sierra range and almost on a line parallel 



