October i6, 1S95.] 



Garden and Forest. 



411 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



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, OCTOBER 16, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article: — Forestry for Farms 411 



Seacoast Planting Leonard IV. Ross. 412 



A Season with the Native Orchids.— I Re~j. E. J.Hill. 412 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 413 



New or Little-known Plants: — Yucca Whipplei. (With figure.) 414 



Plant Notes. 415 



Cultural Department: — Oncocyclus Irises y. N. Gerard. 416 



The Vegetable Garden IV. N. Craig. 416 



Indoor Work W. H. TapUn. 417 



Polyscias paniculata, Tricyrtis hirta G. W. Ohver. ^ij 



Frost Iniuries to Pears and Apples G. Harold Pmuell. 417 



Correspondence: — Seasonable Notes from Wellesley, Massachusetts, 



T. D. Hal/! fid. 417 



A Few Climbino; Plants Fatuiy Copley SeaT'ey. 41S 



Meetings of Societies : — The American Dahlia Socxeiy. .Fro/essor L. H. Bailey. 418 



R ecent Publications — ^. 419 



Notes 420 



Illustration :— Yucca Whipplei in Southern California, Fij^. 56 415 



Forestry for Farms. 



MANY writers and speakers have argued strenuously 

 to prove how important our forests are as factors 

 in the public economy. The direct usefulness of forest 

 products and the influence of the forest-cover upon 

 soil and temperature and drainage, and therefore upon 

 climate and health, have been insisted on until the subject 

 has become an old story, and a story with little meaning 

 to very many good people. The strongest appeals to Con- 

 gress for the protection of our national forest domain have 

 been made on these broad considerations, and yet, 

 although the testimony of science and of history ought 

 to convince any candid mind, comparatively little has 

 been effected in this direction. Besides this, persistent 

 effort has been made to convince the holders of large 

 areas of timber that it would not only be to the com- 

 mon welfare, but would accord with wise business fore- 

 thought, to conduct their lumbering operations without the 

 usual waste, and in accordance with the principles and 

 practice of sound forestry. These teachings may have 

 helped to prepare the way for a better system, but their 

 results as yet are hardly visible. 



Little direct effort, however, has been made to in- 

 augurate wiser methods of treating woodlands on the 

 farm. It is true that from many farms in the east- 

 ern states all the growing wood has practically been 

 removed, but on the most of them a fair propor- 

 tion of woodland still remains, and, e.xcept for the fact 

 that they are not so frequently burned over, these small 

 holdings are wasted and treated with as little intelligence 

 and prudence as are the forests on the national domain. 

 The amount of timber which comes into the market every 

 year from the little wood lots on a thousand farms is 

 enormous in the aggregate, and this suj^ply has been a 

 considerable factor in keeping down prices. Since the 

 introduction of portable sawmills acre after acre of fair 

 timber has been cut over, and as no provision has been 

 made for a new crop the productive timber area is con- 

 stantly diminishing. About ten years ago a lumberman 

 brought one of these mills into a count)' of northern New 

 Jersey. It was considered a perilous venture, for it seemed, 

 on a casual survey, that all the available timber in the scat- 



tered wood lots of that section would be exhausted within 

 half a dozen years at the farthest. But the same man has 

 four mills now working, and competition has brought in 

 si.x others, so that there are ten mills constantly at work cm 

 these isolated lots of timber. As it is the general practice 

 of the farmers there to turn cattle into the cleared land there 

 is little hope for any forest-growth here for a generation at 

 least. 



For this reason a little manual, entitled Forestry for 

 Fanners, which has been prepared by Mr. Fernow and 

 reprinted from the Year-hook of the Deparlment of Agricul- 

 ture, ought to be welcomed for its possible usefulness. The 

 farmer rarely treats his wood lot as if he considered it a 

 source for the continuous supply of firevi'ood, fencing and 

 such dimension timber as he may need. When he wants 

 a stick for any purpose he chooses the best tree he can 

 find, and his laborers too often select trees for firewood 

 which will cut and split most readily. In this way he 

 not only culls out the best species of trees, but the best 

 individuals of the species, and leaves the crooked and 

 comparatively useless ones to cumber the ground. The 

 folly of such practice would only be paralleled if he cut 

 away his corn crop and left the weeds to grow. In a few 

 brief paragraphs Mr. Fernow shows that no farmer need 

 destroy in this way a source of revenue, and explains how 

 the forest can be constantly used, and yet steadily im- 

 proved, so that the wood lot will preserve its ability to 

 furnish a timber crop, and as time goes on will have better 

 kinds of wood to cut and better individual trees. No owner 

 of woodlands can read the paragraphs on Reproducing the 

 Wood Crop without being convinced of the extravagance 

 and waste of resource which characterizes the ordinary 

 wood-cutting on the farm or without seeing clearly how it 

 is possible at once to use and to regenerate the woods. 



"Forest-planting and tree-planting are two different 

 things. The orchardist who plants for fruit, the landscape- 

 gardener who plants for form, the roadside-planter who 

 plants for shade, all have objects in view that differ from 

 those of the forest-planter, and, therefore, they select and 

 use material differently. " These words begin the chapter 

 on Forest-planting, which is written for farmers or small 

 land-holders who have not already a lot of growing tim- 

 ber, and in the few pages devoted to the subject of starting 

 timber plantation many vqtj useful hints are given. These 

 hints are all directed to methods which will produce the 

 most wood of the best quality to every acre, for the object 

 sought for is a crop, and not individual trees, any more 

 than a spear of corn is considered by itself in preparing 

 for a corn crop. Interesting hints are given about select- 

 ing trees for this crop, and the farmer who reads carefully 

 the notes about their adaptability to climate, to soil, to 

 situation, besides the necessity of selecting species not only 

 for the usefulness of their wood, but for their general good 

 influence upon the forest mass — that is, the total crop — 

 will readily see how easy it is to make mistakes at this 

 point which will be more disastrous because their effects 

 are not seen for several years. 



But, although to the forester the individual tree is only 

 useful as a part of a mass, the successful planter must 

 have a considerable knowledge of the various elements of 

 his mass if he is to have the most profitable crop. Very 

 appropriately, therefore, this little manual opens with a chap- 

 ter entitled How Trees Grow, in which a few of the essentials 

 in the behavior of a forest-tree are set forth. Some knowl- 

 edge of the physiology of tree-growth is necessary both to 

 one who cares for an established forest and one who plants 

 a new one, aiid^most interesting are the paragraphs which 

 treat of such subjects as the food materials of the tree, the 

 conditions of soil and light necessary to its development, 

 its growth in length, in ramification and in thickness, its 

 varying form and means of reproduction. Like the chap- 

 ters which follow, this initial one is illustrated with some 

 helpful cuts, and the book throughout is written in a 

 straightforward style with the topics logically connected. 

 Any intelligent farmer can comprehend it from end to end. 



