566 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 249. 



certainly nothing but good can come of such discussions 

 as those now carried on by Mr. Harrison in every part 

 of the state of New Hampshire where an audience can be 

 gathered. Of one thing we may be assured, and that is 

 that no effective action will be taken by the men who are 

 chosen by the people of New Hampshire to make their 

 laws until the people themselves are thoroughly educated 

 to comprehend and appreciate the paramount importance 

 of these forests to their general prosperity. 



As is well known, the vineyards of California, especially 

 those in the southern part of the state, have suffered se- 

 verel)^ from a disease first recognized by the appearance of 

 discolored spots on the leaves. In some localities it is 

 known as the Black Measles, and the damage to the crop 

 has been very considerable. A number of persons have 

 attempted to discover the cause of the disease, but hitherto 

 no one has succeeded in detecting the fungus, if it be a 

 fungus, which causes the trouble. Recently Messrs. Viala 

 and Sauvageau have published the results of their investiga- 

 tions at the Ecole de Viticulture, in Montpellier, France. 

 They recognize two diseases very similar in the effects 

 they produce, one found in Europe and the southern 

 United States, the other only in California. The former 

 was first noticed in France in 1882, and is called La Brunis- 

 sure ; the latter, called by Viala and Sauvageau Maladie de 

 Californie, is decidedly the more destructive of the two 

 diseases. Both diseases are caused by species of Plasmo- 

 diophora, a genus of Myxomycetes, to which belongs the 

 fungus which produces the so-called club-foot of cab- 

 bages. The fungi of this group consist merely of masses 

 of protoplasm without the deiinite mycelial filaments of 

 other fungi. The fungus of La Brunissure is called by 

 Viala and Sauvageau Plasmodiophora vitis, and that of the 

 Maladie de Californie, P. Californica. Li neither species 

 were they able to detect spores. The plasmodium of both 

 species is found in the green cells of the leaves, especially 

 in the large palisade cells, which are found just beneath 

 the epidermis of the upper side of the leaves, and it varies 

 greatly in shape and amount in different cells. 



On Broad Top. — I. 



WHERE is Broad Top ? What is it like ; and what do 

 you do there ? For many years, as the time approached 

 for our autumnal trip to this out-of-the-way part of Pennsyl- 

 vania, we have been asked these questions and have 

 found no trouble in answering the first, but the last two 

 are more difficult to explain, for the place is so unlike all con- 

 ventional mountain resorts. It is not, indeed, a resort in any 

 sense, but a mountain wilderness, happy in having few 

 special features, no points of interest, and little of what the 

 reporters call " fine scenery." 



Charles Dudley Warner somewhere speaks of tourists who 

 search for " scenery that ranges from tire two-dollar to the 

 five-dollar a day kind," and this is not the place for them, nor 

 can they understand the beauty of these shaded moss-grown 

 roads on the abandoned farms (see illustration, page 571) ; of 

 the woods and sunny meadows ; above all, of the sense of re- 

 moteness which forms much of the indefinable charm of the 

 place. It has had devotees in ourfamily foryears, since two be- 

 lated hunters found refuge overnightin the little log-house that 

 not only shelters us when we come to the mountain, but is 

 still the home of the same family who lived in it then. That 

 family, and others scattered at intervals over the mountains, 

 are the remnants of a life that is passing away, a primitive 

 Pennsylvania that will soon vanish as the spirit of " Progress " 

 spreads over these wilds, and railroads, mines and hideous 

 coke ovens invade the " hollows," and the " runs," that have 

 heretofore been so beautiful. 



The Broad Top country is a mountainous region with an 

 average altitude of 1,800 feet, lying in Bedford, Huntingdon 

 and Fulton counties, and is the eastern limit of the bitumi- 

 nous coal measures. It is reached on its northern and west- 

 ern borders by the East Broad Top and Huntingdon Railroads, 

 the former connecting with the Pennsylvania Railroad at Mt. 

 Union, the latter with the same road at Huntingdon, and be- 

 tween these two places are some of the boldest and most 

 beautiful mountains to be found along the Juniata. 



The southern and eastern borders of the country can only 

 be reached by mail-wagon or private conveyance, as Fulton 

 County does not possess a mile of railroad, though the South 

 Pennsylvania road, if ever built, will cross it and open up to 

 the world its beautiful valleys and moimtains. Although the 

 general outlines ot the mountains follow the parallel system 

 so noticeable in Pennsylvania, here in the coal country they 

 are picturesquely broken, the valleys in many instances are 

 really deep ravines, taking their names from the streams that 

 run their short but active life through them. These streams 

 were once the haunt of the trout, and their banks the home of 

 the Rhododendron, but some of the most wild and beautiful 

 ones are now blackened in their lower reaches by the wash 

 from mines and dumps, and the ravines are made hideous by 

 squalid villages. 



The mountains are tremendously steep, but there are few 

 rocky precipices, as in most instances the outcropping rock 

 has been so shattered by the action of frost and time that land- 

 slides have been formed, smaller, but like those so noticeable 

 along the Narrows''of the Juniata. The mountains have been, 

 and still are in many places, magnificently wooded, and the 

 forest-growth is most varied and interesting ; many of the 

 White Oaks are superb, but with the increase of building one 

 fears their days are numbered. The work of the saw-mills is, 

 of course, a necessity, but the waste is so terrible that we care- 

 fully avoid seeing one in operation a second time, foritis pain- 

 ful to note the great branches left in the woods and the slabs 

 that are run directly frorn the saw into the fire. The waste of 

 a saw-mill, however, is a trifle compared with the destruction 

 of the bark-peelers, who, after gathering their harvest, leave 

 the spectral bodies of what were once trees to a slow decay, 

 unbeautified by the kindly moss which almost at once begins 

 to cover the fallen timber not denuded of its bark. 



On the map at the junction of the three counties above men- 

 tioned is an irregular expanse marked " Broad Top Mountain," 

 between eight and ten miles long, and varying from two to 

 four miles in width. The greatest altitude, about 1,800 feet, is 

 at the southern extremity. From this head, which is a wilder- 

 ness miles in extent, enormous arms and " saw-teeth " project 

 boldly into, and separate, the valleys below. The township 

 roads crossing the lower end of the mountain are built along 

 and down these arms, and, except for occasional reaches of 

 Oak-barrens on the higher levels, one may drive for miles in 

 any direction through almost continuous shade. The roads 

 are of two kinds — those that are " wagoned a heap " and those 

 that " hain't wagoned so much " — and we find the pleasantest 

 drives are those where the wagon goes ahead and we follow 

 on foot. The mountain is literally a broad, though by no 

 means a flat, top, and has a little system of its own of inner 

 ridges, plateaus and an upland valley formed by Trough Creek, 

 which rises near its head, and almost equally dividing this inner 

 table-land, flows north until, after a long and devious journey, 

 it empties into the Juniata. 



The country was settled about the beginning of the Revolu- 

 tionary War by English and Scotch-Irish emigrants from Mary- 

 land, who took out warrants for land that, in most instances, 

 was held for several generations by descendants of the original 

 settlers until the absorption of the small holdings by the large 

 coal and iron companies. 



A good spring was the fir-st requisite for a site, and that once 

 found, land was cleared, log-houses built, orchards planted, 

 until, in a few years, farms, some of them quite extensive, were 

 scattered over the mountains, though at a safe distance from 

 their nearest neighbors, as game was a necessity. About the 

 beginning of this century coal was discovered, and, with the 

 advent of the railroads, that Golden Age, when "a man could 

 open his door at sun-up and shoot a deer in his garden," when 

 turkeys and pheasants ruined the buckwheat-crop, and when 

 no man was considered fit to hold a rifle who shot game any- 

 where save through the head, disappeared forever. 



About 1855 there was a mining and railroad boom. Most of 

 the land passed into the possession of corporations, and the 

 movement has continued until now a few large companies 

 control the country. On Broad Top Mountain, with the excep- 

 tion of a few farms on the northern border, held on leases 

 from the companies owning them, all the farms were, of 

 course, abandoned. 



The men who sold them felt themselves the possessors of 

 immense wealth, and, in many cases, simply departed with 

 their goods and chattels, leaving their houses and barns to the 

 elements. Others removed their logs and timber and built 

 elsewhere, but one and all left behind them what was almost 

 imperishable — the restful beauty of the place. The little moun- 

 tain farm that we have known so long lies within the encir- 

 cHng rim of the mountain, upon a partially cleared promon- 



