August 2S, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



343 



largely supplanted, wood as fuel. The price of wood did 

 not increase, and the greater cost of labor lessened the 

 profit so much that it checked further clearing. Though 

 an occasional piece of woodland may now be cleared, the 

 limited call for wood is generally met by cutting the older 

 trees and by thinning the woodlands. 



Still another cause has worked unfavorably to the forests, 

 and somewhat curiously shows the operation of economic 

 forces. As the children of the farmer grew up, many of 

 the sons left their homes for the cities, or sought their for- 

 tunes in the west ; many farms were therefore sold, since 

 they could not be profitably worked by hired help alone, 

 and the proceeds of the sale generally furnished a compe- 

 tence to the owner. They were mostly sold subject to a 

 mortgage, often a heavy one. Under such conditions 

 much timber was cut and sold to pay the debt or to bring 

 more of the land under cultivation. Farms with a large 

 amount of woodland were purposely bought with this end 

 in view. Some, on which fifty years ago the proportion of 

 forest to cleared land was from a fourth to a third, have 

 been nearly stripped of timber, so that now not a tenth part 

 is woodland. It was at times a fruitless struggle on the 

 part of the debtor, and the farm came back to the mort- 

 gagee with its condition greatly changed. It is safe to say 

 that the forest-covering has been reduced to one-fourth the 

 area it had fifty years ago. This is taken as a point of 

 departure for comparison, partly because the land was at 

 that time largely in the hands of the first settlers or their 

 children, and partly because my observation goes back to 

 about that time. Account has not been taken of forest 

 fires, although local damage has often been occasioned by 

 them. The timbered areas gre too circumscribed and the 

 population too dense for fires to gain much headway. The 

 worst fires to deal with are those which get established in 

 peaty swamps in a time of drought, which slowly eat their 

 way along and usually persist till they are drowned out by 

 fall rains or smothered by a covering of snow. Nor is 

 account taken of pasturing the woods. The damage from 

 these two causes results more in the thinning of the forest- 

 covering than in the reduction of its area. 

 Chicago.'^IlI. J^- J- nill. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



Crinum purpurascens. — According to information recerjtly 

 received at Kew, this Crinum is practically aquatic in its 

 habits. It grows in rivers and lagoons near the mouth of 

 the Niger River, on the west coast of Africa, the Leek- 

 like bulbs buried in mud often three feet below the sur- 

 face of the water, and the long strap-shaped, partially sub- 

 merged leaves are so altered in character as to resemble 

 certain sea-weeds. This species was first introduced into 

 cultivation in 1877, when it flowered at Kew, and was 

 figured in The Botanical Magazine, t. 6525. It continued to 

 be an exceedingly rare plant in gaudens until about five 

 years ago, when the late Mr. F. Horsman, of Colchester, 

 introduced a quantity of it. At Kew it is grown in pots in 

 a stove and treated the same as any ordinary Crinum, 

 except that a saucer holding water is placed under the pot 

 while the plant is m active growth. Now, however, it is 

 to be tested as an aquatic. It has crowded umbels of stel- 

 late flowers about six inches across, white, tinged with 

 rose, and very fragrant. It blooms all through the summer. 



HjEmanthus Katherintic, — This is a magnificent green- 

 house bulb easy of cultivation, and producing annually 

 umbels of rosy scarlet flowers as large as a child's head, 

 and lasting about a month. I am certain that if some en- 

 terprising nurseryman in the southern states were to grow 

 this plant by the thousand he would find as ready and 

 large a market for it as the Bermuda Lily has now. It can 

 be multiplied by means of bulb-scales in the same manner 

 as Hyacinths, and it produces seeds freely. There are 

 three large heads of the flowers in the Cape-house at Kew 

 now, and I am surprised at the large number of horticul- 



turists who are unacquainted with it. They in their turn 

 are astonished when informed that the plant has been in 

 cultivation in England nearly twenty years (it was intro- 

 duced from Natal by Kew in 1877), and that it is one of the 

 handsomest and most manageable of all the fine bulbous 

 plants which we owe to south Africa. 



Dendrobium Phal/Enopsis. — So far this plant has been 

 practically a perpetual flowerer. We have never been 

 without its blooms since it was first introduced in quantity. 

 Whether this is due to the plants having been obtained 

 from various importations received at different times of the 

 year I cannot say, but, at ^wy rate, its behavior so far has 

 been quite exceptional for a Dendrobium. Our plants are 

 grown in the hottest and moistest house we have, and they 

 are placed on a shelf close to the highest part of the roof- 

 glass, where they get comparatively little shade. Here 

 they grow well, forming pseudo-bulbs from a foot to 

 eighteen inches high, which flower as soon as they are 

 mature, and not resting for a time as most of the Dendro- 

 biunisdo. After the flo\vers fade the plants are not watered 

 for a few weeks, when new growth appears, and the hot 

 moist treatment is repeated. We have no tropical Orchid 

 that will keep on flowering like this. IMay one again ap- 

 peal to growers to drop the name Schrcederianum for this 

 plant.? It is simply D. Phalaenopsis, a variable species, as 

 we now know it, but requiring no third name, except in the 

 case of individual varieties, such as album, etc. There are 

 more plants of this Dendrobium in cultivation now than of 

 any other species, except, perhaps, D. nobile. 



SoBRALiA Veitchii. — This is a hybrid raised last year by 

 Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons from Sobralia macrantha, crossed 

 with S. xantholeuca. The flowers are as large as those of 

 the latter species, white, tinged with lilac, the lip more 

 deeply shaded with lilac, with a blotch of yellow in the 

 throat. A plant now flowering at Kew, and obtained as S. 

 xantholeuca, is practically identical with the hybrid raised 

 by Messrs. Veitch, and as the two parents are found grow- 

 ing together wild, there is no reason why nature should 

 not have anticipated the nurserymen and made the same 

 cross. I believe there are more species of Sobralia ad- 

 mitted than is warrantable, some of them having no other 

 distinguishing character than mere flower color. A plant 

 of S. xantholeuca now flowering at Kew differs from the 

 type in having brownish red blotches on the front of the 

 lip, a difference which was looked upon by a distinguished 

 orchidist as "almost sufficient to constitute a new species." 

 There are many such among Orchids. 



Two NOBLE Bedding Plants. — One of the most beautiful 

 pictures to be seen out-of-doors at Kew this year is a round 

 bed twenty feet in diameter, filled with Galtonia candicans 

 and Gladiolus Brenchleyensis. The bed is in an open 

 position on one of the lawns close to one of the principal 

 entrances, no other flowers being near it. The Galtonia 

 spikes are about three feet high, the Gladiolus a little 

 shorter, and they are so thick that no soil can be seen, 

 nothing but a great mass of bright scarlet and nodding 

 bells oi white. The production of such an excellent effect 

 is very easy ; a sovereign, about, would purchase the bulbs, 

 which should be planted early in the spring in good soil, 

 but not in strong manure, which is often fatal to bulbous 

 plants, especially of the Gladiolus kind. 



Paulownl-v imperL'\lis is a grand plant to use for subtropi- 

 cal gardening. At Kew it is planted in a very large oblong 

 bed, on a lawn sheltered by a shrubbery on the north side 

 and exposed to full sunshine on the south. The plants, 

 which are about tjiree years old, were cut down to within 

 six inches of the ground in early spring, and when they 

 started to grow all the buds except one on each plant were 

 removed. Watered in dry weather and mulched with 

 manure, they have grown to a height of four feet, and the 

 beautiful palmately lobed leaves are each from a foot to 

 eighteen inches in diameter. It is impossible to have any- 

 thing more effective as a foliage-plant when seen in the 

 mass than this. Ferdinanda eminens, Castor Oil, big- 

 leaved Solanimis, Wigandia Caracasana and similar large- 



