102 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 36S. 



lianes festoon the trees, and Dr. Ridgway tells us of Grape- 

 vines with stems more than a hundred feet long and more 

 than afoot in diameter, and of Aristolochias, Poison Ivies and 

 Bignonias nearly as large. No other American forest-scene 

 is more beautiful, and certainly no other forest of deciduous 

 trees, for it must be remembered that in all this great col- 

 lection of trees there is not a single species with evergreen 

 leaves, is more interesting. A view in one of these bottom- 

 land forests, with masses of the Virginia Creeper clothing 

 Ihe trunks of the trees, appears in the illustration on page 

 105 of this issue, made from a photograph, for which we 

 are also indebted to Dr. Schneck. No picture, however, 

 can give an idea of the stateliness and grandeur of these 

 noble trees, or of the luxury of the annual and perennial 

 plants that cover the forest-floor with almost impenetrable 

 thickets. 



In ending this brief notice of Dr. Ridgway's most inter- 

 esting and important contribution to dendrological science, 

 we cannot refrain from the hope that equally well-trained 

 and enthusiastic observers may appear to study the com- 

 position of other forest-regions in the Mississippi basin 

 before the demands of a larger population destroy the 

 noblest deciduous-leaved trees that the eyes of man have 

 rested on. 



The most encouraging sign that the time is approaching 

 when our wasteful methods of lumbering will give place 

 to something like an intelligent system of forestry, is the 

 attitude of the lumbermen and the lumber-trade journals. 

 Only a few years ago anything like a criticism of the prev- 

 alent methods of clearing away the woods was resented 

 and sneered at as sentimental, and any prediction that the 

 timber supply could be exhausted within a given number 

 of years was attributed to ignorance. In these days, how- 

 ever, we expect to see in the lumber-trade journals sound 

 advice about forest-preservation, and the lumbermen, 

 whose business it has been to cut and market timber, are 

 now thoroughly alive to the fact that they must look for- 

 ward and provide for the future as well as for the present. 

 All this was clearly shown at a late meeting in Boston of 

 the vigorous Northeastern Lumbermen's Association. 

 After the inevitable banquet of such occasions the keynote 

 of the most effective speeches was "the slaughter of the 

 forests must be diminished." Mr. George B. James, who 

 presided, affirmed that the output of New England forests 

 depends u])on their intelligent management ; that under 

 proper forestry conditions the supply of lumber may be 

 continued for many years to come ; without proper man- 

 agement their market value is soon destroyed and genera- 

 tions must elapse before timber can be reproduced upon 

 land that is stripped of every vestige of growth. When 

 lumbermen clearly apprehend that the future of their busi- 

 ness depends on the care with which our forest-resources 

 are husbanded, we can begin to hope that the end of use- 

 less forest-^destruction is at hand. 



Notes on the Distribution of the Yellow Pine in 

 Nebraska. 



THE central portion of Nebraska is occupied by a 

 peculiar region covering fitteen to twenty thousand 

 square miles, known as the Sand Hills, now practically tree- 

 less, except in the deep canons, and made up of an undu- 

 lating surface of grass-covered sand, not infrequently 

 consisting of deep valleys bordered by very steep hills 

 from two to four hundred feet high. 



A somewhat prolonged study of these Sand Hills has led 

 me to the inquiry whether they have always been treeless. 

 They bear no little resemblance to many regions still cov- 

 ered with Pines in other portions of the United States. I 

 have traveled for days through Pine-forests in Michigan, 

 which if denuded of trees would be much like our Sand 

 Hills, both as to soil and surface configuration. It is 

 not impossible that forests formerly covered the Nebraska 



Sand Hills, as in places they slill do the sand hills of 

 Michigan. 



As we pass up the canons of the larger streams we find 

 trees. These are mainly of eastern species, and it is possi- 

 ble that they migrated liither, and never spread from the 

 narrow cations. This appears to have been the opinion of 

 Hayden and many other of the early explorers of the 

 Plains, and I think it is still the prevailing belief that these 

 hills were always destitute of forests. Let us, however, 

 consider the following facts : 



(i) There are many isolated cations which contain trees. 



This suggests that either (a) the seeds of these trees must 

 have been distributed by birds or winds, or (6) a former 

 more general distribution. It is not probable that birds and 

 winds carried the seeds to these carious. The physical 

 barriers are often too great to warrant us in assuming that 

 birds were the agents in distributing the seeds from which 

 sprang the forests in isolated canons. Nor can we assume 

 that winds carried the seeds. We are forced to assume 

 that the forest-areas must have formerly been more ex- 

 tended, sufficiently so to connect these isolated cation 

 forests with one another. 



(2) There are in these caficms western as well as eastern 

 trees and shrubs. 



This fact is significant, as it requires some further ex- 

 planaiion of the origin of the present canon flora. These 

 western trees and shrubs could not have reached their 

 present stations unless conditions favorable to forest-vege- 

 tation were formerly much more general than now. 



(3) The Yellow Pine, Pin us ponderosa, var. scopulorum, 

 of the Rocky Mountains, now grows with other trees upon 

 the hills of Pine Ridge from the Wyoming line, in Sioux 

 County, to the Dakota line, in Sheridan County. 



In this region there are eastern and western trees, and 

 they are growing upon the hilltops as well as in the valleys 

 and canons. I have seen hundreds of trees of Yellow 

 Pine growing here upon the open hillsides and upon the 

 most exposed buttes. 



(4) The Yellow Pine is now to be found in the caiions of 

 the Niobrara River and its tributaries as far east as the bor- 

 der of Holt County. 



In the canons the Pines are growing thriftily, and in 

 many places young trees are springing up abundantly. 

 Several years ago I saw such a new growth of Pines in the 

 northern part of Brown County, where the cafions are still 

 full of fine healthy Pine-trees. There is nothing in these 

 cafion Pines to suggest that conditions are now less favor- 

 able than they formerly were, but when one studies the 

 borders of the caiions carefully, evidence is not wanting to 

 the contrary. Here trees are found upon the most exposed 

 points and crags, where it would now bepractically impos- 

 sible for them to obtain a foothold. Many of them are 

 evidently the veterans holding desperately the stations 

 otherwise practically abandoned by the species in its losing 

 fight against unfavorable conditions. 



(5) The Yellow Pine extended eastward along the North 

 Platte River and the Lodge Pole Creek to Deuel County, 

 until the pioneers destroyed them forty or fifty years ago. 



In some places this destruction has been so complete 

 that scarcely a trace now exists of the Pines. Nothing 

 could better illustrate the rapidity with which all traces of 

 these trees may disappear than their history along these 

 two western streams. 



(6) The Yellow Pine grew in considerable quantities in 

 at least one station on the Republican River until destroyed 

 by the early settlers. 



Until within a few months it was generally supposed 

 that the Yellow Pine never had grown naturally in the Re- 

 publican valley. Last fall Mr. E. M. Hussong, of Franklin, 

 m Franklin County, found several decaying stumps of 

 Pine on the south side of the river, near the town, and upon 

 close inquiry learned from the oldest settlers that in the 

 early days small Pine-trees had been dug up in the caiions 

 and on the bluffs and transplanted to dooryards and gar- 

 dens, wliilc the large trees were taken for fuel and fencing 



