April 3. 1S95. 



Garden and Forest. 



'31 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



rUELISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Saugent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— Why We Need Slulled Foresters 131 



The Farm Home Reading Circle 131 



The White Pine in the West Professor Charles A. Krffer. 132 



Marketin;^ Apples George A. Cochrane. 132 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 133 



New or Little-known Plants :—Mimulus Clevelandi. (With figure.) 



7". 5. Brajidegee. 1 34 



Plant Notes 134 



Cultural Department:— Some Flowering Plants for Easter W. N. Craig. 136 



Japanese Anemones T. D. H. 136 



Snowdrops, New and Old J. N. Gerard. 137 



The Cherr\' Fruit Mold Professor By ro7i D. Halsted. 137 



Yellow-fruited Tomatoes F. A. Wmigh. 138 



Onosma stellulatum E. O. Orpet. 13S 



Lettuce for Forcing IViUiam Scott. 138 



Correspondence ; — Oranges in Soutliern Mississippi G. 7\ Drennnn. 138 



A Large Grapevine J. //. j\Lllichamp, M.D. 139 



Exhibitions: — Spring Flower Show in Boston 5. 139 



Notes 140 



Illustration : — Mimulus Clevelandi, n. sp.. Fig. 20 135 



Why We Need Skilled Foresters. 



A FORTNIGHT before the adjournment of the last Con- 

 gress, Mr. Fernow, Chief of the Division of Forestry 

 in Washington, appeared before the House Committee on 

 Agriculture and presented a statement in regard to some 

 proposed legislation for the establishment of courses of 

 forestry in agricultural colleges and the establishment of a 

 national school of forestry. In regard to the special pro- 

 visions of the two bills under discussion we shall take 

 occasion to speak at another time, but just now it is our 

 purpose to reproduce in a condensed form some of the 

 arguments presented by Mr. Fernow to show why we 

 ought to begin at once to provide for a supply of techni- 

 cally educated forest-managers. The shameful annual 

 waste of our forest resources is due to a lack of knov/ledee 

 of even the elementary principles of successful forest man- 

 agement, and the waste will continue until the necessity 

 for greater knowledge is realized. This broader knowl- 

 edge will surely arouse us to attempt the management of 

 our public and private forest-lands on rational principles, 

 and then the demand for skilled foresters will be urgent. 



The forest area of the United States is the country's 

 largest producer of value, e.xcept its agricultural lands, and 

 these yield their return with much hard human labor, while our 

 forests give their enormous quantit}' of material, exceeding 

 in value a thousand million dollars every year, for the mere 

 harvesting. Our forests, while yielding twice as much as all 

 our mines of every kind, have been worked as if they were 

 mines, and they have even been mined irrationally. Not 

 only has the accumulation of centuries been taken away 

 with no thought of future production, but the paying ore 

 has been taken out and the tailings have been dumped on 

 the remainder to make its development more difficult — that 

 is, not only have the forests been slaughtered without any 

 attempt to provide for growth in years to come, but the 

 useful species have been culled out and the grounds have 

 been left to inferior kinds to grow up and prevent the nat- 

 ural reproduction of the better kinds, and in this way the 

 value of large areas of growing timber has been impaired. 



According to Mr. Fernow's estimate, we have reduced 

 our supplies to a point where we are cutting into our capi- 

 tal at the rate of fifty to seventy-five per cent, of our con- 



sumption every year — that is, it is probable that the annual 

 growth of the timber in the United States does not amount 

 to more than a quarter of the wood we cut and use in any 

 year. Of course, a change from these irrational methods 

 ought to have been made long ago. That such a change 

 should be made before our supply approaches any nearer 

 to absolute exhaustion may be understood when we re- 

 member that many of the trees we are now cutting are 

 centuries old. The desirable pine lumber of Michigan and 

 of Wisconsin began to grow in the time of the French and 

 Indian war ; the hard Pine of the south must be two hun- 

 dred years old or more to satisfy a lumberman. The 

 Spruces of Maine furnish comparatively little saw-timber 

 before that age, and the big Tulips and Cypresses and 

 many of the Oaks of the south, together with the magnifi- 

 cent giants of the Pacific, count their age by centuries. 

 Our statistics are of the crudest, and it is useless to specu- 

 late how long our forest resources will last under the 

 present methods of using them, but if these methods are 

 not changed it is safe to say that a scarcity in desirable 

 wood material will be pinching us within the next half 

 century — that is, before a new crop can mature. Of course, 

 we shall not stop or even materially reduce our con- 

 sumption of wood until the necessity is at our doors, for it 

 is the experience of the world that, in spite of substi- 

 tutes and changes of condition, wood is so useful and 

 indispensable to civilization that its total consumption does 

 not abate. All this shows more than a lack of forethought. 

 It shows among the people most interested an utter ignor- 

 ance of the fact that the timber growing on an acre of 

 land is a crop, and that it ought to be treated as a crop, 

 just as Wheat or Corn is treated ; that the growing of timber 

 may be carried on as a business, and that this busmess re- 

 quires skill and knowledge ; that in our natural forests 

 timber cutting and timber growing can be carried on at 

 once, and that by a judicious use of the axe alone in old 

 timber, a new crop of better quality and larger quantity to 

 the acre can be reproduced. 



There is no need to enlarge here upon the fact that in 

 the south thousands of square miles have been made prac- 

 tically useless by erosion, which is directly traceable to the 

 destruction of the forests there, nor upon such other estab- 

 lished truths of general interest as that the destruction of 

 forests intensifies floods, wastes the water which should 

 be stored up for irrigating our plains, and injures crops and 

 climate by allowing fuller sweep to drought-bringing 

 winds. The need of preserving an assured supply of forest 

 material is of itself enough to justify any effort at increas- 

 ing the knowledge of practical forestry. That the agri- 

 cultural colleges ought to be required to give some 

 instruction on a subject so intimately related to the cultiva- 

 tion of the soil seems to need no argument. Many of the 

 sciences on vi'hich agriculture is based must be studied by 

 the skilled forester, and. therefore, these colleges are par- 

 tially prepared to furnish the needed instruction. Several 

 of them already do furnish instruction of a rudimentary 

 and primitive character, but, until there are special chairs 

 of forestry established, we can hardly hope that much 

 technical education which will fit a man to manage forest 

 property intelligently will be given. How men can be 

 found to fill these chairs is a question to be discussed by 

 itself, but, certainly, this educational problem is that part of 

 the general forest problem which just now demands the 

 closest study. 



The Farm Home Readiiiii^ Circle. 



IN the latter part of the year 1S92 the Faculty of the 

 Michigan Agricultural College prepared a course of 

 reading for farmers, gardeners, fruit-growers, stock-breed- 

 ers, etc., to be used in what is designated the Farm Home 

 Reading Circle. The object of this reading circle was to 

 offer a systematic course of reading on agriculture and 

 kindred topics, with books furnished at reduced prices 

 through the Secretary, and provision was made by the State 

 Board of Agriculture to have the printing, correspondence 



