August 24, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



399 



are seldom seen, and the growers complain that apples no 

 longer pay ! Why is it that farmers can understand a Wheat- 

 field, or a Potato-patch, luit cannot learn the lirst lesson in 

 tree-culture ? Wliy is it that year after year they drag through 

 the twelve months with no respite of shade or fruit and 

 pass down to their successors only a bare and burdened 

 farm ? 



Some of these old orchards bear profusely in occasional 

 years, but the fruit is poor, being largely natural or seedling 

 varieties, and the labor of picking from the tall and scattered 

 trees is greater than the fruit is worth. I have a mind to stop 

 at every farm-house and urge the people to cut down the old 

 orchards ; but no ! that would be cruel. Better leave some- 

 thing to warm the hearts of the growing boys and girls and to 

 give them some fragrant memories of the old farm, for I take 

 it that most of them will leave it in due time. 



But I am not saying that this is a poor or infertile country. 

 I have only tried to say that there is little evidence of new pur- 

 pose, for when the old trees pass away the orchards will be 

 gone. We shall not travel far over these hills until we find 

 evidences of the new life which freshens the soil and adds a 

 new interest to the old farms. These farms which we are now 

 passing, let it be said, grow as big crops of wheat and hay as 

 they did in the early days, but the products must be wrung 

 from the soil by greater effort. It is not true that the soil is 

 exhausted in these lands which fifty years ago were the 

 Wheat-fields of the west. Wheat-lands have given way to stock 

 and the dairy in many cases, and yet Wheat is the staple, and 

 finer crops of it never grew on the prairies of Illinois or Da- 

 kota than we are now passing along the road from Jackson- 

 ville to Trumansburg. We now lose sight of the lake except 

 at intervals, and we find ourselves well up on the tops of the 

 hills, ten miles from Ithaca. It is a beautiful country. The 

 soft hills roll onward to the sky-line, ribbed by ravines and ve- 

 neered here and there by rectangular wood-lots, and every- 

 where strapped together by the winding roads. Broad quiet 

 valleys run off here and there. The road-sides are freshly 

 mown, for it is now haying-time, and their flowing outlines add 

 the finish to pleasant country scenes. 



The little hamlets along the way all bear the flavor of earlier 

 days. The taverns at the four corners with porch touching the 

 street, and the old open sheds and weather-beaten barns at 

 the side, are reminders of the stage-days ; and the village fathers 

 still loaf about them with stories of their youth. Jacksonville 

 is one of these hamlets, and it is particularly interesting to us, 

 because the so-called original tree of the King of Tompkins 

 County apple stands here. This is in Tompkins County, whence 

 the apple got its nanie, and every gray-haired inan will tell the 

 story of the old tree. Nevertheless, none of them know its 

 true history, and I; too, for obvious reasons, will not tell it. 

 But the tree is grafted, and the grafts appear to have been 

 brought from the lower Hudson River region early in the cen- 

 tury. There the apple was known as the Flat Spitzenburgh, 

 and its origin appears to be lost. Several persons brought 

 grafts from this region to Tompkins County, but this tree at 

 Jacksonville is the oldest one left, and it is the one from which 

 most of the stock has been distributed. It is two feet in 

 diameter and is still vigorous. 



Cornell University. L. H. Bailey. 



In the Woods of Eastern Texas. 



THIS part of Tyler County is a hundred miles from the Gulf 

 of Mexico, and nearly as far from the west line of Louisiana 

 — that is, it is about on the thirty-first parallel, and in longitude 

 about 34° 30". Geologically, this is in the older part of the 

 newer Texas. With the exception of the large rivers that rise 

 in the highlands northward and westward, the county is 

 watered by numerous small spring-fed brooks, and sometimes 

 small bogs occur. The soil is generally sandy and light, al- 

 most sterile in places. When mixed with alluvial deposits it 

 becomes black and highly productive. It is well adapted to 

 the cultivation of Pears, Peaches, Strawberries and garden- 

 vegetables. Doubtless, in eastern Texas, as elsewhere, soils 

 occupied by coniferous forests will become better after clear- 

 ing by age and cultivation. Along the sandy banks of the little 

 brooks the liandsome little IVIayaca is common. In some 

 localities we see the tall yellow trumpets of Sarracenia flava, 

 and in the small sphagnum-carpeted bogs Utricularia cornuta 

 abounds with Calopogonpulchellus, Pinguicula pumila,aXyris, 

 and the queer, glistening red leaves of some Sundew not yet 

 in blossom. 



In the Pine-woods the pretty Polygala polygama is very 

 common, and more rarely its more southern cousin, P. lutea. 



Aristolochia reticulata is often seen, and very rarely in Texas, 

 as niy experience goes, is the northern A. serpentaria found 

 among its neighbors. These species both have aromatic 

 roots, and doubtless the same medicinal properties. 



Of shrubs, Stillingia ligustrina and one species of Myrica, if 

 not two, are everywhere. So Itea now displays its racemes 

 of rather handsome but scentless white flowers. The .Silver 

 Bell (Halcsia) and Chionanthus l)lossom much earlier. By 

 the way. Snow-flower, as its generic name signifies, would be 

 a more euphonious as well as a more significant common 

 name than Old IVIan's Beard, or Fringe-tree, for the well-known 

 last-named species. 



But I set out to write of the Silva of eastern Texas. The 

 sandy land is principally occupied by Pinus mitis and P. tajda. 

 Pine-forests are pleasant, but weird places withal to visit. 

 Their tall columnar trunks, needle-like leaves, the peculiar 

 soughing of the winds in their tops, such as is heard in no 

 other forests, and their dislike for other forms of vegetable 

 life, fill the visitor with an awe amounting almost to reverence. 

 But one is glad to visit these primeval Pine- woods, because their 

 existence in some forms runs back in time far Ijeyond that of 

 most of their deciduous neighbors, and yet one is saddened by 

 the thought that the whole class of conifers are being destroyed 

 by a short-sighted extravagance which, in a few years, will 

 render a large Pine-tree as much of a rarity and curiosity as a 

 Sequoia is now. Pine-trees here are not large, rarely becom- 

 ing two feet in diameter, but they are tall, straight and hand- 

 some. 



Here along the creek-bottoms are tracts of Beech-trees that 

 would do credit to a New York forest. Beech is not only a 

 stately tree, it is also a staid one. Though common in our 

 original forests from New Brunswick to Wisconsin, and south- 

 ward to central Florida, and in Texas to within reach of the 

 salty breezes of the Gulf, yet the tree is everywhere itself. 



We can count at least a half-dozen species of Oak, Ouercus 

 aquatica being the most abundant species ; that species is set 

 down in the books as a small tree. Near Nacogdoches, 

 Texas, I measured one that was over twelve feet in circum- 

 ference. At Arkadelphia, Arkansas, I met with individuals 

 still larger and proportionally tall. 



With the northern Hickories, Sugar Maple, Red Maple 

 (small form), White Maple, White Ash, American and Slippery 

 Elms, Ostrya, Carpinus, River Birch, Basswood, Alnus serru- 

 lata. Flowering Dogwood, Black Cherry, Witch-hazel, Box- 

 elder, and the vicious Rhus vernix, which has not left its poi- 

 sonous effluvium north, as a wrapped and swollen hand bears 

 painful witness, growing everywhere around him, with sphag- 

 nous bogs and the Partridge-berry common in the Pine-woods, 

 one would almost fancy that he was in a northern forest. But 

 the strong, sweet odor of the Evergreen Magnolia mingled with 

 its less pretentious but hardly less handsome and odorous de- 

 ciduous congener, M. glauca, and the presence of Sweet Bay 

 (Persia), Wild Peach (Prunus), of Ulmus alata, Planera, Chin- 

 quapin, Holly and Cassine recalls his wandering, and leaves 

 him in the woods of eastern Texas. The Evergreen Magnolia, 

 as it is usually seen in its native woods, is a very plain tree, 

 with coarse, scattered branches, and bark becoming rough 

 and scaling with age. In thinner woods and open fields it 

 thickens up and becomes, at its best, the handsomest and 

 most conspicuous forest-tree of its range. It sometimes attains 

 a diameter of over four feet, and reaches a hundred feet in 

 height. The species crosses the ninety-sixth meridian in 

 Waller County, which is about its western limit. The most 

 northern locality where I have seen the species growing in 

 cultivation is Fayetteville, Arkansas, near the thirty-sixth 

 parallel. Magnolias have lived there in apparent health for 

 many years, though the mercury sometimes sinks to eight or 

 ten degrees below zero. Holly grows in the gardens of Fay- 

 etteville with Magnolia, but not so vigorously. 



Some botanical writers in describing Ilex vomitoria limit its 

 range to a distance of twenty miles from the Gulf-coast. 

 Nature is kinder and more liberal to the species, and allows it 

 to grow in great abundance at least a hundred miles from the 

 Gulf. So far as I can learn, no one is using an infusion of the 

 leaves of Cassine as a substitute for tea. Some people did 

 use them in that way during the privations of war, as they may 

 have used seeds of Sesbania Cavanillesii as a substitute for 

 coffee, and Mesquit-beans instead of wheat and corn for bread. 

 But it is hardly fair to accuse southern people of committing 

 such foolishness now. 



Two weeks later than the date of the above notes, I saw in 

 the San Jacinto valley, west of Conroe, nearly the same forest- 

 growth. Sugar Maple, Beech, Witch-hazel and Rhus vernix 

 had, however, been left behind. 



Bastrop, Texas. E. N. P. 



