December 21, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



601 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by 



Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articies :— Co-operation ajjainst Insect Invasions , 6oi 



The Cedar of Lebanon. (With illustration.) 602 



Notes of a Summer Journey in Europe. — XX J. G. yack. 602 



On Broad Top.— II Mira Lloyd Dock. 603 



A Campaign against the Tent Caterpillars Daniel Denison Slade. 604 



New OR Little-known Plants ; — Galax aphylla. (With figure.) 604 



Foreign Correspondence ;— Centrosemas IV. Watson, 604 



Cultural Department ;— Irises and their Cultivation. — I J. N. G. 6c6 



Carnations for Market T. D. //. 608 



Notes from the Harvard Botanic Gardens AI. Barker. Cog 



The Forest: — The White Pine for Timber Edmund Mersey, B. E. Ferno^M, 609 



Correspondence ; — The Te-\as Barben-y Josef'li Meehan, 611 



Meehan's Halesia TJioii/as Meehan. 61 1 



Gardening Beside a Hot Spring Charles Howard Shinn. 611 



Notes (J12 



Illustrations : — Galax aphylla. Fig. 103 605 



Grove ot Cedars on Mount Lebanon, Fig. 104 607 



Co-operation against Insect Invasions. 



IN an etiitorial article in our issue for September 28 we 

 endeavored to show tliat the enormous losses every 

 year to our fruits and farm crops, from the depredations 

 of insects, made some concerted action necessary as a pro- 

 tection against these pests. No industry can endure a tax 

 of ten per cent., and this is not an exaggerated estimate of 

 the average loss which our farms and orchards suffer every 

 year from this source. The loss is more than a purely 

 commercial one, for insects and fungi not only destroy 

 marketable products- of the farm and the timber of the 

 forest, but by ruining shade-trees and ornamental 

 plants they deface the beauty of the garden and roadside, 

 and in this way detract much fi'om the comfort and 

 pleasure of country life. In a letter referring to our article, 

 Professor J. B. Smith, of the New Jersey Experiment 

 Station, cited striking instances where serious loss could 

 have been averted by timely and united work, and at the 

 meeting of the New Jersey Horticultural Society last week 

 he read a paper on the same subject from which we are 

 glad to select some illustrative cases for instruction and 

 warning. 



In 1884 the Pear midge was complained of in an orchard 

 near New Britain, Connecticut, where it had been intro- 

 duced in Pear stocks imported from France a few years 

 earlier. The insect had been growing with little observa- 

 tion until, in 1883, it took nearly the entire crop of the 

 orchard. The next year, however, Professor Smith found 

 the insect still confined to two adjacent orchards, as there 

 were no other Pear-orchards within several miles. Dr. 

 Riley, of the Department of Agriculture, read papers before 

 fruit-growers' associations, warning all concerned that the 

 insect would not remain fenced in these narrow limits, but 

 would break out and spread over the country, and although 

 he received votes of thanks for his "instructive address," 

 no one attempted to arrest the ravages of the insect. Of 

 course, the orchard of New Britain did not hold it long. 



and in 1891 it had invaded the Hudson River Valley in 

 injurious numbers, and in 1892 a neglected orchard as far 

 away as New Brunswick, New Jersey, showed that half of 

 the Lawrence and Bartlett Pear trees there were attacked, 

 while a few individuals had invaded a neighboring orchard, 

 one of the best in the state. Of course, the extinction of this 

 insect is now impossible, and no one can tell hovs' many 

 thousands of dollars it will cost the pear-growers of the 

 country to struggle with this pest in future. By co-operative 

 action this particular invasion could have been checked at 

 the outset, and only by co-operative action can immunity 

 from its attacks hereafter be assured. No matter how 

 alert and careful a fruit-grower may be, after the insect 

 once enters a fruit, it is destroyed. He can only take 

 measures after the injury is done to prevent a renewal of 

 it another year. But his individual effort will be of little 

 avail. The valuable orchard above spoken of lying near 

 the neglected orchard, which is only a breeding-ground 

 for the midge, furnishes a case in point. No matter what 

 measures are adopted by the owner of the good orchard to 

 prevent the development of the insect on his own land, 

 there is nothing to hinder the midges from multiplying by 

 myriads in the neglected orchard, and, when developed, 

 hordes of them will throng over the line to attack the 

 luscious fruit. It is the old story over again, the industri- 

 ous and energetic man suffers from the lazy indifference of 

 his thriftless neighbor. 



The insect most dangerous to the Blackberry is the red- 

 necked caiie-borer, which lays its eggs at the axil of a leaf, 

 leaving the larva to girdle the cane. In the effort of the 

 plant to repair the injury the well-known galls are formed, 

 and by simply cutting these out in early spring, when 

 pruning, and burning the cut wood, the entire brood can 

 be destroyed. But the careful grower clears his land 

 to no purpose so long as the beetles will mature on his 

 neighbor's canes, and then fly over to destroy his crop. 

 Near Hammonton, New Jersey, there are many fields 

 which are simply left to take care of themselves and every 

 cane is infested. Such fields are simply nuisances. They 

 will bear no fruit themselves and will produce insects to 

 reduce the crop of all surrounding fields. Last year the 

 crop in that vicinity was reduced twenty-five per cent, 

 by insects alone, and next year the loss will be full one- 

 half of the crop. It is another case where the shiftless 

 husbandman brings ruin upon his neighbor as well as 

 himself. 



Now, it would not be difficult to draft a law v^'hich 

 might protect a careful fruit-grower from the noxious 

 insects bred by the recklessness of his neighbors. The 

 difficulty at once arises that no such law will be enforced. 

 There are similar laws against noxious weeds, but offenses 

 against them are rarely brought into court. In California 

 a law was passed which required the owners of Orange 

 and Lemon-groves to use remedies which had been 

 proved effective against the scale insect. Few persons 

 obeyed the law, and when actions were instituted under 

 the statute, juries of farmers could not be induced to 

 convict the transgressors. In one of the north-western 

 states, where swarms of Rocky Mountain locusts were 

 devouring every green thing, it was shown that plowing 

 over the ground where the eggs had been laid would 

 destroy the insects and prevent injury the following 

 year. The Legislature passed a law to make this plow- 

 ing compulsory, and provided for having it done by 

 the state where it was neglected. Still, a very small number 

 of farmers obeyed the law, and some of them even de- 

 manded damages for trespass upon their land, vi'hen the 

 work was done for them under state authority. It is 

 better to enact no law than to pass one which remains 

 a dead letter on the statute-book and thus helps to breed 

 a contempt for all law. What is needed first in every case 

 is an enlightened public opinion behind any given law, so 

 that its enforcement will be ensured. 



In another column of this paper will be found the in- 

 structive record of a campaign against the tent caterpillar 



