October 19, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



S03 



stream and a solitary Torreya Californica, the only one in the 

 region. Immense bushes of Rhododendrons in full bloom 

 fairly line the banks. The distant effect is of white masses 

 against the dark Redwood, but upon a nearer view the deli- 

 cate buff markings tinge the white. Watson's description of 

 R. occidentale, the California Azalea, mentions the " pale 

 yellow bands upon the white or slightly rosy flowers." I have 

 sometimes seen plants to whose flowers pale yellow applied, 

 but the generality are marked with a distinct buff of various 

 shades, depending upon age of flower, location, or minor va- 

 riations of the species. Watson {^California Botany) gives the 

 height of R. occidentale as from four to six feet, but on Austin 

 Creek, at least, it seems hard to find plants of less than eight 

 or ten feet in height. 



Several miles below our camp the Redwood forest was cut 

 by lumbermen twenty or thirty years ago, and it lias since par- 

 tially grown up. This region possesses a peculiar interest to 

 me because, more than any other place I know of, itsliowsthe 

 kind of reforesting that might easily be had with a little care 

 from capable officials. If the fire had been kept out of several 

 hundred acres along Russian River and Austin Creek, its 

 tributary, there would be a fine and well-distributed growtii of 

 Redwoods there, for few cattle and sheep are in the region. 

 The lumbermen left many old decayed trees, which sheltered 

 the stumps, so that nearly all sprouted, and the young Red- 

 woods are now loaded with seed. Richer soil could hardly be 

 obtained anywhere, and if the fires which have swept through 

 here nearly every other year were prevented, the second 

 growth would be valuable. 



In this -old lumberman's camp, wild Blackberries, Rasp- 

 berries and Currants have taken possession of acres. But the 

 most remarkable feature is the extent to which the common 

 Bigroot, Megarrhiza Californica, has become a drapery for 

 stumps and fast-dying Redwoods. It is the Ivy of every de- 

 serted Coast-range lumber-camp. Twenty, thirty, forty feet 

 above the ground, its star-like flowers, prickly balls and pale 

 green leaves trail downward. In luxuriance of growth it 

 almost rivals the wild Grape. But it stays in the clearings ; 

 you may search the deep forest for miles without discovering 

 a plant of Megarrhiza. 



In the early days of lumbering here, the Redwood-trees 

 were cut at a height of twelve or fifteen feet from the ground, 

 the best part of the trees being wasted. IVIany such stumps 

 still remain and are being worked out for the lumber. In one 

 case on Russian River, a stump fifteen feet high and sixteen 

 feet across yielded fifteen thousand feet of lumber which sold 

 at $40 a thousand because it happened to be of especial beauty 

 for cabinet-work. This stump was taken out by Colonel J. B. 

 Armstrong, of Guerneville, who afterward told me the par- 

 ticulars. The labor of four men for three days was required 

 to saw off the stump at the surface of the ground ; then it was 

 necessary to use eight yoke of oxen to drag the stump over. 

 After splitting the log into four parts with powder, it was taken 

 to the mill, and turned out, as I have said, fifteen thousand 

 feet of "curly Redwood." If all the stumps paid like this, 

 there would be work for many companies in the deserted 

 lumber-camps, but it is easy to see tliat many are shattered, de- 

 cayed or destroyed by fires. In cases where the lumber from 

 the stumps is of no value, the cost of clearing bottom-land is 

 from one hundred to four hundred dollars per acre. The 

 fruit-growers along the Russian River usually spend from fifty 

 to a hundred dollars "clearing brush," and plant their Prune 

 and Peach orchards among the blackened stumps. Some of 

 the finest fruit-trees I have ever seen were growing in this 

 way. The soil is very deep and rich. No finer orchard-soil 

 can be found anywhere. 



Berkeley, Cal. 



Charles Howard Shinn. 



Recent Publications. 



The Foot-path Way. By Bradford Torrey. Houghton, 

 Mifflin & Co. 



The song of that light-hearted rogue, Aufolycus, with whose 

 peccadillos we are inclined to sympathize in spite of our Puri- 

 tan inheritance, seems a little out of place upon the title-page 

 of a volume which records the impressions and observations 

 of a naturalist of the nineteenth century. For, in these days, 

 we are nothing if not scientific — while the song from the 

 Winter's Tale was written in the days before science was. 

 Forever associated with the merry harvest-feasts of Bohemia, 

 over which Perdifa presided, it suggests that spontaneous 

 delight in out-of-door life found now only in the child which 

 has not yet borne the burden and heat of the day, or perhaps, 

 in the tramp who evades them. But, since the paradise once 

 lost may not be regained, and even our children's play-hours 



must have some touch of serious earnest, it may be that the 

 passion of the scientist will prove no unworthy substitute for 

 the glories that have passed away. We are not surprised, then, 

 that a walk over the " Foot-path Way," under Mr. Torrey's 

 guidance, is no dreamy saunter over liighways and hedges, 

 with heart and mind passive and inert, and the senses only 

 half-responsive to the myriad enchantments with which nature 

 would woo the wanderer from his petty cares ; but rather a 

 rough scramble over hill and dale, "through bush, through 

 brier," with every sense alert and vigorous, and the mind as 

 keenly alive to the quest of the moment as if the fortunes of a 

 state depended upon the observations taken during a morn- 

 ing's walk. This volume, like its predecessors, by the same 

 author, "Birds in the Bush," and "A Rambler's Lease," consists 

 of a series of essays on out-of-door topics, most, if not all, of 

 which were first published in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly. 

 To Mr. Torrey, all objects in nature, whether animate or inani- 

 mate, have both charm and significance, and though his own 

 interest centres chiefly in birds, his eye is trained to note the 

 grace and beauty of every way-side flower, and his ear quick 

 to catch in the solemn music of the Pines "some accents of 

 the eternal language " whicli he would fain interpret, if only 

 with faltering accents, to his fellow-men. 



But Mr. Torrey's love for birds is more human than orni- 

 thological, and bespeaks the man rather than the scientist. He 

 studies them as individuals rather than "en masse"; delights 

 in their idiosyncrasies and depicts their little virtues, or, per- 

 haps, their vices, in a fashion peculiarly his own. For this rea- 

 son the pages in which he records the manners and customs 

 of his feathered friends prove very pleasant reading even to 

 those who do not share his enthusiasm in his favorite pursuit. 

 The information he gives is interspersed with flashes of play- 

 ful fancy and occasional touches of genuine humor which 

 would give charm even to a duller subject, and we cannot but 

 envy him his enjoyment. "A happy man," he tells us, "is 

 the bird-lover — always another species to look for, another 

 mystery to solve. His expectations may never be realized, 

 but, no matter, it is the hope, and not the fulfillment, that 

 makes life worth having. How can any New Englander 

 imagine that he has exhausted the possibilities of existence so 

 long as he has never seen the Lincoln finch or the Cape May 

 warbler? But I speak 'as a fool.' Our happiness, if we are 

 bird-lovers, indeed, waits not upon novelties and rarities. All 

 such exceptional bits of private good fortune let the fates 

 send or withhold as they will," and so, though he feels all the 

 scientist's enthusiasm for the " novelties and rarities" that fly 

 across his path, he finds a sober certainty of waking bliss in 

 watching the daily and nightly habits of the birds that from 

 time immemorial have haunted the abodes of men. 



In the paper entitled "December Out-of-doors," he writes 

 very pleasantly of the kill-deer plovers, the presence of which 

 in great numbers made the winter of 1888-89 famous in 

 the ornithological annals of New England, but even his 

 interest in this rare " find " does not blind him to 

 the delicate winter loveliness of the vines and mosses, 

 nor make him forget to note the sixteen sorts of wild blos- 

 soms to which December sunshine had given courage to 

 brave December storms. In " A Widow and Twins " we have 

 one of the prettiest bits of observation ever recorded in the 

 annals of a naturalist. The widow is a tiny humming-bird de- 

 serted apparently by her mate at the time when she is most in 

 need of his protection, and Mr. Torrey enables us to watch 

 with eager interest the tender care she bestows for eight long 

 weeks upon her mites of nestlings, until, at last, the period of 

 infancy safely passed, all three fly away to some brighter 

 clime, to return once more perhaps when the Honeysuckle is 

 again in bloom. In "Robin Roosts" we learn the rather 

 startling fact tliat robins fly for miles at nightfall to roost with 

 thousands of their mates in some grove which has been 

 chosen for the season as the nightly trysting-place of all the 

 clan. The paper which shows the most true poetic feeling is 

 that written in praise of the White Pine, which, for some rea- 

 son he does not give, Mr. Torrey chooses to call the Weymouth 

 Pine. For the moment he is above science and the objects 

 of science, and is only conscious of the beauty of the solitary 

 Pine and the impressive solemnity of the Pine-forest, dark, 

 spacious, slumberous, musical. The lowly Partridge-berry and 

 the showy Lady's-slipper attract him, for they are always the 

 Pine-tree's neighbors, and with them he would listen to the 

 murmuring leaves, which give utterance to musings and feel- 

 ings that lie too deep for words. But these moods pass : " We 

 are always in the presence of natural beauty, but only on rare 

 occasions are our eyes anointed to see it. Such ecstasies it 

 seems are not for every day. Sometimes I fear they grow less 

 frequent as we grow older. We will hope for better things ; 

 but should the gloomy prognostications fall true, we will but 



