January 30, 1895. 



Garden and Forest. 



41 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY I!Y 



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. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article :— Legislation against Plant Pests 41 



An Old Bridge and a Long-lapsed Thoroughfare in Massachusetts. (With 



figure.) 42 



Gardening a Good Outlet for American Vitality !\I. C. R. 42 



Plant Notes ■ 44 



New or Little-known Plants : — A Monstrous form of the Black Spruce. (With 



figure.) 44 



Cultural Department :— A few Good Shrubs of the Hardiest Type. y. G. Jack. 45 



Vegetable Garden Notes IV. N. Craig. 46 



Propagation of Chrysanthemums T. D.H. 46 



A Few Plants that Like Shade F. H. H. 47 



Meetings of Societies : — Nebraska State Horticultural Society 47 



Western New York Horticultural Society 48 



j^ECENT Publications 49 



Notes - 50 



Illustrations : — An Old Bridge in Wrentham, Massachusetts, Fig. 6 1 43 



A Monstrous Form of the Black Spruce, Fig. 7 45 



Legislation against Plant Pests. 



IN the month of May, 1894, a resolution was passed by 

 the Legislature of Massachusetts requesting the Repre- 

 sentatives and Senators from that state in Congress to use 

 their influence in securing from the Federal Government 

 an appropriation of $100,000 to assist the commonwealth 

 of Massachusetts in exterminating the gypsy moth. A 

 committee appointed by the Massachusetts Board of Agri- 

 culture has visited Washington in pursuance of this resolu- 

 tion, and, as we understand it, the matter is now regularly 

 before the Congress of the United States. Really, this is 

 not a new movement, for the effort to secure this appro- 

 priation is simply a renewal of what was tried last year. 

 There is little probability, however, that any action will be 

 taken in this matter at the national capital, although that 

 section of the Constitution which authorizes Congress " to 

 provide for the common defense and general welfare of the 

 United States " has often been interpreted with great lib- 

 erality. We can all remember when Congress authorized 

 agents of the Department of Agriculture to enter upon pri- 

 vate premises and slaughter animals which were adjudged 

 to have pleuro-pneumonia, and then paid the owner what 

 they pleased. The general welfare seemed to demand that 

 our herds should be guarded against this danger, and, as a 

 matter of fact, pleuro-pneumonia was utterly stamped out. 

 Few persons now believe, however, that it is practicable to 

 exterminate the gypsy moth. The state commission, which 

 has been fighting it, have undoubtedly done much to pre- 

 vent its spread and have narrowed the territory over which 

 it once extended. But this moth is so prolific and so indif- 

 ferent as to what it feeds upon that its actual extinction, 

 now that it has gained a foothold, seems out of the ques- 

 tion. It may be true that if the insect is allowed to multi- 

 ply unchecked it will overspread a large portion of the 

 country, and in this way prove a national calamity, but 

 the machinery for restraining it has now been so thoroughly 

 organized that a comparatively small force of men em- 

 ployed as watchers in districts that have not been entirely 

 cleared can control and gradually lessen its ravages. The 

 western states will not be inclined to spend money to protect 

 themselves from a danger so remote, and will probably sug- 

 gest that Massachusetts should take care other own insects. 



This is certainly a wholesome rule. In this particular 

 instance it may be a special hardship for Massachusetts, 

 but there are many other insects quite as destructive, and 

 there are fungous diseases even more serious, and if this 

 state or other states should once discover that national aid 

 was easy to obtain they would do nothing for themselves, 

 but trust to general welfare appropriations altogether. 



It will never answer, on the other hand, to make light 

 of the dangers and damage which come from insects, fungi 

 and other foes of agriculture and horticulture as not worth 

 considering by legislatures, state and national. If, as it 

 has been estimated, this damage amounts in the country 

 to half a billion dollars a year, or say a million and a half 

 of money every day, there are few subjects of greater eco- 

 nomic importance. It must be admitted, too, that these 

 losses can in no way be checked without cooperation of 

 some kind, and organized effort usually comes in the form 

 of law. It is worse than discouraging for a man to spend 

 time and money in ridding his Apple orchards of the tent 

 caterpillar, or his Plum-trees of the black knot, when his 

 neighbor allows both insect and fungus to multiply on 

 trees on adjacent land. It does not seem unreasonable, 

 then, in cases for which there are known remedies, 

 that landholders should be held responsible for their own 

 premises, and that when these premises are allowed to 

 become hot-beds of pestilence and breeding-grounds of 

 injurious insects, the representatives of the people should 

 step in and clean out these plague spots at the expense of 

 their owner. Laws which authorize the destruction of 

 Peach-trees affected by the yellows have already been 

 passed in Michigan, Delaware, New York and California, 

 and in New Jersey the officers of the state experiment 

 station are empowered to enter on lands where plants are 

 infested with any new fungus and destroy the same by 

 fire or otherwise as they shall deem best. In one of the 

 north-western states a law was passed to compel farmers 

 to plow over lands where the Rocky Mountain locusts had 

 laid their eggs, to prevent injury the following year, and it 

 provided for having this work done by the state where the 

 landowners neglected it. 



In fact, it is not difficult to draft laws to protect every 

 careful farmer and fruit-grower from noxious insects and 

 diseases which are bred on the grounds of careless neigh- 

 bors. The trouble is that the public sentiment behind 

 these laws is not, in many cases, sutficiently active and 

 vigilant to enforce them. So far as we know, the law in 

 New Jersey, which was aimed at a new Cranberry fungus, 

 has never been put into execution. Almost every state has 

 a statute against permitting the Canada Thistle to go to 

 seed, and yet how many persons have ever been prosecuted 

 for such negligence.' The very classes most interested 

 in the extermination of the Peach yellows and the black 

 knot have often combined to defeat legal action, and the 

 farmers whose lands were plowed over to destroy the 

 locusts prosecuted the state officers for trespass. Never- 

 theless, just as fast as communities are educated up to the 

 enforcement of them, such laws ought to be enacted. 

 Everybody in eastern Massachusetts, for example, ought 

 to know the tent caterpillar and the cankerworm, and 

 ought to realize what their unchecked ravages mean. It 

 would seem that the time has come in some states, at least, 

 when public opinion ought to be sufficiently strong to 

 enforce a law compelling every man to keep his land 

 cleared of these pests. Other insects will doubtless prove 

 quite as injurious at some future time, and, therefore, such 

 a law may well be broadened out to give the state 

 entomologist autho^^ity to warn landholders of the im- 

 portation of any new insect, or of the appearance in alarm- 

 ing numbers of any that are well known. 



One difficulty is that people do not know their 

 foes when they arrive. The gypsy moth itself would 

 not have gone on increasing for several years before 

 it was discovered unless it had started in a region 

 where the cankerworm defoliated every year a large 

 portion of the trees, and the inhabitants had become 



