February 3, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



49 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Oph-ich: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles : — The January Thaw 49 



The Aspect of Trees in Winter. (With figure.) 50 



The Proposed Forest-reservation in Northern Minnesota 50 



Is Grafting a Devitalizing Process ? — 11 Professor L. H. Bailey. 



Notes on the Mid-winter Vegetation of Central Florida A. N. Prentiss. 



New ok Little-known Plants : — Sniila.x Pseudo-China. (With figure.). . C 5. 6". 



Foreign Correspondence; — London Letter W. IVaisoii. 



Cultural Department : — Ericas N.J. Rose. 



The VaUieof Wind-brealis E. P. Pmuell. 



Alternanthera Leaf-blight Professor Byron D. Halsted. 



Galvanized Iron for Propagating-beds IV nt. C. Strong-. 



Berberis Thunbergii T. D. H. 57 



Correspondence : — The Forests of Washington Louise Herrick Wall. 57 



The Hardiness of certain Evergreens Joseph Meehan. 57 



Meetings of Societies : — The Western New Yorlt Horticultural Society. — 1 58 



Maintaining the Fertility of the Soil in Orchards., ./"r^t-w^jr /. P. Roberts. 58 



Notes 



Illustrations : — Smilax Pseudo-China, Fig. 10 



A Branch, of the Black Oak (Quercus tinctoria), Fig 



59 

 53 

 55 



The January Thaw. 



WITH hardly frost enough preceding to excuse it, the 

 January thaw made its appearance early in the new 

 year to add its terrors of melting snow and heavy atmos- 

 phere to the already unhealthy season. 



This freak of nature is detestable enough in towns, where 

 there is some slight mitigation of its evils by the interven- 

 tion of sidewalks, with their attendant shovels and brooms. 

 ThoLigh the dripping roofs, the reeking gutters, the slip- 

 pery pavements, the muddy crossings, make the pedes- 

 trian's career precarious enough, the most disagreeable of 

 city thaws does not begin to interfere with domestic com- 

 fort, or impede locomotion, as a similar infliction does in 

 the rural districts, where roads and paths become well- 

 nigh impassable with mud and slush. 



That part of this annoyance might be avoided by proper 

 care on the part of the road commissioners is well known, 

 but there is always a reluctance shown by towns to make 

 the proper appropriations for the maintenance of the high- 

 ways, which show all their defects in a thaw. 



If all the low portions of these thoroughfares could be prop- 

 erly drained, and a good bed of stones provided beneath, the 

 surface moisture would soon drain off, and leave a firm and 

 reasonably dry surface for travel. The saving of expense 

 in the long run, in the wear and tear of vehicles, and in the 

 time of individuals, now wasted in slow endeavors to get 

 from place to place through sloughs of mud, would well 

 repay a large expenditure to properly prepare the roads in 

 the beginning ; but here the penny-wise and pound-foolish 

 policy is apt to prevail, to the trial of horse-flesh and patience. 



If any one will remark the difference between a gravelly 

 road and a low undrained stretch of highway, he wall 

 promptly recognize the service that a porous understratum 

 renders to the passenger. So soon as the sun thaws the 

 snow the former gives a firm surface for travel, while the 

 latter grows steadily worse as the dissolving snow-heaps 

 pour their waters into the tank formed by the impervious 

 soil. In the one case drying can only be effected by 



evaporation, while in the other the moisture steals away 

 by a million underground channels, which can be pre- 

 pared for it by a foundation of broken stone. With the 

 long-suffering of American communities trained to a make- 

 shift policy, we put up with a state of things that was 

 prevalent in England a hundred years ago, but which has 

 been done away with there on the great lines of travel, as 

 it could easily be done away with here by a resolute effort 

 on the part of our townspeople at their annual meeting, 

 when a different policy of managing the roads should be 

 urged and generously sustained. 



It is at this season of melting snow and lowering 

 heavens that facilities of travel are most essential to the 

 dweller in the rural districts, compelled as he is to the 

 contemplation of a melancholy landscape, for if the coun- 

 try can ever be a sorry sight it is on one of those bedrag- 

 gled days when the heavy gray sky comes down upon 

 the sodden earth and envelops it in a dripping mantle. 

 The picturesqueness of a veiled distance, apparent enough 

 through a summer rain, has vanished, and only near ob- 

 jects are visible. 



Big tear-drops hang from every joint of the vines on 

 a veranda, as if the skeleton creepers were bemoaning this 

 pitiable sight. Whatever is not mud-color or white in the 

 landscape, is black. The trees have gone into mourning, 

 the fence-rails are plunged in gloom. Near houses look 

 dingy ; more distant ones, if visible, shiver forlornly under 

 their chilly trees. The evergreens themselves show a shabby 

 winter rairnent of rusty green, specked with brown. Not 

 a snow-bird or a sparrovs' ventures abroad. 



A heavy wagon at long intervals struggles through the 

 mud, or a be-mired foot-passenger pi'cks his dreary way 

 among the puddles and stiff ridges left by the snow-plow 

 in its travels. The very dogs and cats are housed, and 

 cling to the warm fireside rather than venture abroad out- 

 of-doors. 



This is winter in undress, without his ermine robe and 

 glittering crown of icicles, and a disreputable old monarch 

 he shows himself when not in gala attire. To those who 

 ^o forth to face him he gives but a chilling greeting. His 

 sleety breath, his freezing mists, are enough to deter the 

 stoutest-hearted member of the Appalachian Club. There is 

 stimulus in a brisk snow-storm but a v\anter fog disheartens 

 even the brave, who fear its " grip" even more than its cold 

 embrace. Tremble as we may at nipping cold and icy blasts, 

 we brace ourselves to meet them, and the blood flows 

 more freely for the effort. It is the inert depression of the 

 motionless mist that induces gloom, and against this man 

 needs all his resolution. 



Here must the mind act upon the shivering frame, and 

 rouse it to combat with the outside enemy. For it is during 

 these winter imprisonments that the dweller in the country 

 finds time for study and reflection, for the free exercise of 

 thought and the construction of plans for the future. Those 

 influences which tend to throw the mind back upon itself 

 are the real enhancers of intellectual growth. In the roar 

 and hum of contact wnth human life, in the restless re- 

 sounding of calls to active duty, the soul fails to catch the 

 note of its own bell, which only in silence and solitude may 

 vibrate with a clear tone. 



So sensitive is the intelligence that it more often renders 

 an echo than an original note, which gives us a consola- 

 tion even for the limitation of facilities for locomotion, and 

 even leads us to be grateful for those natural causes which, 

 against our vi'ill, conspire to seclude us for a while to the 

 benefit of our individual growth and to the strengthening 

 of our own mental vibration. 



Thus even a January thaw, with its neglected country 

 roads, which prevent travel and interruptions, may serve as 

 a needed refreshment to a jaded intellect by driving it to 

 the true sources of development, meditation and recollec- 

 tion, for it is not so much bodily activity, nor the contact 

 with others, that inspires original thought, as that com- 

 muning with one's own soul in the stillness, from which 

 the greatest results have ever been born. 



