July 27, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



357 



dustries which consumed vast quantities of wood of all spe- 

 cies, qual'ities and sizes ; at the same time he largely extended 

 his cultivation and increased his tloclcs antl herds ; anil Ix.'fore 

 every one of these advances portions of the natural forest went 

 down and disappeared forever from the face of the land, lint 

 the process was a very gradual one, extending- over many cen- 

 turies. It proceeded slowly at first, and not until compara- 

 tively recent times did the country betjin to assume its present 

 appearance. It is not so very long ago that the road from 

 London to Edinburgh was an unsafe one to travel over incon- 

 sequence of the gangs of robbers who found shelter in the 

 thick forests through which it passed. Do not misunderstand 

 me to pretend that these changes from denudation have in gen- 

 eral been for the worse ; you do not require mo to tell you that 

 up to a certain and, indeed, a very advanced point they were 

 very much for the better. 



" Long before this stage of development had been reached, 

 however, a time had come when it was fovmd impossible for 

 every one to continue to help himself with a free hand ; claims 

 to ownership of forest and waste lands had been set up, and 

 established by the law of might, and some sort of restrictions 

 had begun to be enforced. But these were quite inadequate 

 to arrest the progress of the destruction of the natural forest, 

 which at length reached a point at which the supply of forest- 

 produce became insufficient to meet the requirements of the 

 population ; and measures then began to be taken not only to 

 secure some tracts of forest from further encroachment, but 

 also to increase the wood-bearing area by sowing and planting. 

 But it is not to measures of this nature that many of our largest 

 forests owe their existence at the present day. Their con- 

 tinued maintenance is due rather to the protection they re- 

 ceived under strict laws for the preservation of game than to 

 any endeavor to guard them for the sake of the timber they 

 could yield. The New Forest in Hampshire is a good example 

 of this, and the same may probably be said of the Windsor 

 Forest and of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, as well as 

 of others in Scotland. 



" It will easily be understood that the countries in which 

 civilization advanced with the most rapid strides were those 

 from which the natural forests disappeared the soonest ; and 

 at the present time these islands have a smaller percentage of 

 wood-producing area than is found in any other European 

 country, with the solitary exception of Denmark. The actual 

 proportion is as follows ; 



Russia, ... 40 per cent. Greece, ... 14 per cent. 



Sweden, ... 34 " Spain 7 " 



Norway, . . . 29^^ " Belgium, . . 7 " 



Germany, . . 26 " Holland, ... 7 " 



Turkey, ... 22 " Portugal, . . 5 " 



Switzerland, . 18 " British Isles, . 4 " 



France, ... 17 " Denmark, . . y^ " 



The average is 29^ per cent., and includes orchards and 

 isolated trees in parks, hedge-rows and elsewhere. 



"Countries which, like ours, have a very small wooded 

 area of their own, have to supplement their home-grown sup- 

 plies of wood from other countries which are still able to pro- 

 duce more of this commodity than their population can con- 

 sume ; and, on reference to Dr. Schlich's Manual of Forestry, 

 I find that the United ICingdom annually imports 



Timber to the value of about ;/;i5, 000,000 



Minor forest-produce to the value of about . . 8,000,000 



Total, about ^23,000,000 



"These facts have not, up to the present time, led to any 

 very great amount of inconvenience : (i) because our insular 

 position affords us great facilities for the importation of tim- 

 ber ; (2) because we have a plentiful supply of coal ; (3) be- 

 cause our climate does not demand modifications of the nature 

 which extensive forests are able to effect, nor do we, as a rule, 

 suffer from any deficiency of the water-supply in our wells, 

 springs and streams ; and (4) because the geological formation 

 and the configuration of these islands, and the climatic condi- 

 tions under which we live, do not render it as necessary as it 

 is in many other countries, that large areas should receive the 

 protection against the effects of violent and continuous falls of 

 rain, which is so well afforded by a crop of trees and shrubs. 



" It is true that a part of Scotland has recently suffered se- 

 verely from floods ; but the effects of these floods bear no 

 comparison with those produced by denudation in some other 

 parts of the world, where the rain is heavier, the sun hotter, 

 and the rock and soil are less consistent than with us. 



" While employed by the Secretary of State for India at the 

 French Forest School at Nancy, I visited the southern French 



Alps, which have been subjected to excessive grazing, and 

 from many parts of which not only the trees and shrujjs, but 

 even the very grass had disappeared. The sinface is, there- 

 fore, no longer bounil together Ijy roots ; and when the heavy 

 scmi-lroi)ical rain falls directly upon it the soil, and subse- 

 quently the loose rock, slips down into the valley below. The 

 water charged with these substances runs off with great rapid- 

 ity, and suddenly fills the torrent-beds. These latter soon be- 

 come deepened by the ' scour,' when their sides, deprived of 

 support, fall in ; and the effect of this action, going on through- 

 out the whole system of water-courses which traverse the 

 moinitain-sides, is that, over enormous areas, the upper strata 

 of the soil, with its fields, houses, and even villages, are borne 

 down into the valleys, and the whole region, which presents 

 to the eye little but a series of unstable slopes of black marl, 

 has an extremely desolate appearance. But the damage does 

 not stop here ; for the debris is carried down to the compara- 

 tively level valleys and open country below, where it is de- 

 posited over fields, roads, railways and villages, thus doing an 

 enormous amount of harm. 



" In order to mifigate these terrible evils, the French gov- 

 ernment has undertaken the vast enterprise of regulating the 

 torrent-beds by means of engineering works, and of afforest- 

 ing the mountain-slopes over an area of more than a thou- 

 sand square miles, including nearly two thousand linear miles 

 of torrent-beds. The cost of such an undertaking is, of course, 

 very great, but the circumstances warrant the expenditure. 



" A very similar condition of things prevails in the Hosfiiar- 

 pur District of the Punjab, on which I liad a short time ago to 

 submit a report to the government of that Indian province. I 

 have conversed with men who remember this range of hills 

 covered with trees and tall grass, which were the home of the 

 tiger and other wild animals ; but now there is hardly a blade 

 of grass to be seen, and the hills are gradually being washed 

 away and deposited on the plains below. I am told that the 

 bed of the Mississippi is being blocked by sand and soil 

 brought down from the mountains of the ' Far West,' inconse- 

 quence of the extensive clearings that have been made there 

 during recent years. 



Correspondence. 

 Vernon Park, Philadelphia. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — Some time ago I promised to give an account of what 

 we were doing about Vernon Park, but as usual there is a 

 struggle with some personal interest when any good thing for 

 the public is to be accomplished, and in this case we have had 

 on our hands a lawsuit with some disaffected citizens. The 

 case is now decided, however, in the city's favor, and on the 

 1st of July we placed the property in charge of a city superin- 

 tendent. 



This little park contains about eight acres, and among the 

 areas for small parks we have taken, it is second in importance 

 only to Bartram's Garden. Being in the heart of the German- 

 town district, or the twenty-second ward of the city of Phila- 

 delphia, it is just where the lover of trees can have an oppor- 

 tunity to see some grand old specimens, and convenient to the 

 poor people and their children, who wish a breath of fresh air 

 and an open space to enjoy themselves in. Before this place fell, 

 providentially, into the hands of the Wisters, who have pre- 

 served it, it was owned by an old Philadelphia banker named 

 Meng, who was among the very early patrons of gardening 

 hereabout. He was the chief patron of Kin, who was one of 

 the first botanical collectors in the then dangerous wilds of 

 America, though, singularly enough, his name has never been 

 honored as have those of Rafinesque, Nuttall, Lyon, Pursh 

 and others, possibly because he was in a measure isolated 

 from the public by his German connections. He appears to 

 have been sent here by some patrons from Germany, and his 

 American specimens are still preserved in the Botanical Mu- 

 seum at Berlin, as I am advised by Professor Krug. Some of 

 the first specimens of our rarer Alleghany trees were intro- 

 duced here by him. Undoubtedly the earliest cultivated Mag- 

 nolia macrophylla is here, and it was brought here by Ivin. It 

 was, unfortunately, struck by lightning some years ago, and 

 the exposed wood down the trunk of the tree which was not 

 painted to keep out the water has decayed from one side. I 

 think, however, the good gardener, who, in these days of po- 

 litical appointments, has been fortunately selected to superin- 

 tend these grounds, will arrest farther decay, and that the great 

 woLmds will heal over, a result which the good tree is now 

 bravely trying to effect. 



