April 25, 1888] 



Garden and Forest 



97 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



rUELISHEIi WEEKLY KV 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



[ LIMITED.] 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted bv Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, i£ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGF.. 



Editorial Articles : — The Forests on the National Domain. — Flowers in 



Winter. — A Plantation for Winter. — Note 97 



A Curious Vegetable Growth on Animals Professor W. G. Farloin. qg 



Last Year's Leaves - Dr. Chas. C. Abbott. 99 



How the Mangrove forms Island.^: A. H. Cicriiss. 100 



Certain Cone-eating Insects (with i\\\isiv^iifjn^)...Pro/essor A. S. Packard, 100 



Foreign Corre.spon'dence : — The Kew Arboretum, III Geo, Nteholsoit. loi 



New or Little Known Plants ; — Rosa minutifolia (with illustration), 



Sereno Watson. 102 



Cultural Department: — A Selection of Lilies C. L. Allen. 103 



Kitchen Garden Notes 103 



Fruit Garden Favorites Charles A. Green. 104 



Peat Mucif for Trees or Lawnc. — Transplanting the Arbutus. — Petalos- 



temon decumbens 105 



Tme Forest: — The Forest Vegetation of Northern Mexico, II. (with illustra- 

 tion) C. G. Pringle. 105 



Notes on the Norway Pine H. B. Ayres. 106 



Correspondence: 106 



Flower and Fruit Pictures at the Academy of Design. 



Mrs, Schuyler Van Rensselaei-. 107 



Recent Plant Portraits : loS 



Retail Flower Markets ; — New York, Philadelphia, Boston loS 



Illustrations: — Single Pierced Cone, Fig. 18 101 



Mass of Infested Cones, Fig. 19 loi 



Spruce Cone Worm, Fig. 20 loi 



Moth of Spruce Cone Worm, Fig. 21 101 



Rosa minutifol'a. Fig. 22 102 



The Alameda of Chihuahua 104 



The Forests on the National Domain. 



THE forest-covered public domain of the United States 

 is now, with some exceptions in the Gulf States, 

 confined to those portions of the country west of the looth 

 meridian. These forests, where tirey come within the di- 

 rect and immediate influence of the Pacific Ocean, are un- 

 surpassed in the quantity and value of the material which 

 they contain ; in all other parts of Western America insuf- 

 ficient moisture has made them thin and stunted. Such as 

 they are, however, the forests of the interior regions of the 

 continent play an important and controlling- part in the 

 development of all that vast region, and influence tht; vi'el- 

 fare of communities which now perhaps never give a 

 thought to their existence. For, although often scattered, 

 thin and stunted, they regulate the great rivers of the 

 continent and so have an iinportant bearing on the 

 material welfare of a very considerable part of the Ameri- 

 can people. China within the last year has shown us 

 only too plainly what a great river, deprived of the pro- 

 tecting influence of the forest at its source, can accomplish 

 in death and desolation ; and what has happened in China, 

 will some day happen in America, if the forests which now 

 guard the mountain slopes above the head-waters of the 

 Columbia and the Missouri are sacrificed through the greed 

 or the indifference of our people. 



A large population is directly dependent, too. upou these 

 western forests, for the water they store for irrigation, with- 

 out which no agriculture is possible in nearly all that region, 

 and for the lumber and fire-wood they yield. 



They are forests, too, such is the want of moisture in all the 

 interior of the continent, which have a hard struggle for exist- 

 ence ; the resinous character of the trees and the dryness 

 of the soil make fires exceptionally dangerous and destruc- 

 tive ; and these conditions render the restoration of a forest 

 once destroyed practically an impossibilit)^ We mention 

 these familiar facts to show the necessity of applying 



to these forests the most careful methods of protection and 

 administration which can be devised, both because they are 

 in themselves of very great value, and because peculiar cli- 

 matic and topographical conditions make it a much more 

 difficult matter to protect and extend them than those in 

 more favored parts of the country. They can never be 

 secure in private hands ; they may be preserved and even 

 extended if the general government can be made to realize, 

 what all other civilized nations now realize, that forests are 

 essential to the public welfare, and that they can be safely 

 managed for the good of all only by government adminis- 

 tration. Individuals are not, and never can be, safe guar- 

 dians of a forest upon which a community depends ; and 

 perhaps the most important question which at this time 

 waits the action of Congress is such a settlement of the 

 future of the public forests as will prevent individuals 

 from securing title to any portion of them, or from un- 

 lawfully entering or devastating them. Other public ques- 

 tions can wait a few weeks or a few months without 

 any very serious or at least fatal results, but when 

 a forest of Fir or of Redwood on the Pacific Coast is swept 

 away, there is destroyed what it will require five centuries 

 to restore; and twice that time will not be enough to cover 

 with trees again the slopes of Colorado or Nevada mouu- 

 tains devastated by fire. And yet while Congress year 

 after year refuses to consider seriously the question (if 

 forest protection on the public domain, thousands of acres 

 of these forests are destroyed every year by fires which 

 might have been prevented, or by trespassers who might 

 have been caught and punished. 



Two bills relating to the public forests now await the 

 action of Congress. House bill No. 7901 has already 

 been favorably reported upon by the Committee on Public 

 Lands. The provisions of this bill contain many danger- 

 ous elements, and cannot effect the protection of the 

 forests. It provides that the fee of certain lands shall re- 

 main vested in the Government, but that the timber may be 

 sold from these lands without restriction, and it provides 

 no administrative machinery for the protection of the 

 forests from fire, always their greatest danger. The use of 

 the military, except perhaps at the very outset, and before 

 proper officers can be trained as forest guardians for 

 such regions as it may be deemed expedient to retain in 

 forest, is hardly a practicable measure, or one which is 

 likely to result in any practical good. The public interest 

 demands that this bill should be defeated. 



House bill No. 6045 was prepared under the auspices 

 of the American Forestry Congress, and has the endorse- 

 ment of many persons most actively and intelligently in- 

 terested in preserving the forests of this country. It 

 provides that permanent forest preserves shall be estab- 

 lished under a forest officer and proper subordinates. 

 They are to embrace lands better suited for forest growth 

 than for any other purpose, especially lands situated at 

 the head-waters of important streams ; and they are to be 

 kept in permanent forest and to be carefully guarded from 

 spoliation and destruction. Timber, however, may be sold 

 when it is clearly advantageous to do so, but oidy under 

 the direction of a government officer, and with a proper 

 regard to the future development of the forest Unauthor- 

 ized cutting, and other injury to the preserved forests are to 

 be made criminally punishable. Forest guardians, and 

 methods for their appointment, are provided for, and the 

 notexccssiveappropriationof half a million dollars to carry 

 out the provisions of the bill is asked for. This bill has 

 much to commend it, and it would be fortunate for the 

 American people if their feeling and intelligence were 

 sufficiently aroused upon this subject to compel politicians 

 to stop and consider a measure of such vital national im- 

 portance in the year of a Presidential election. In this bill, 

 however, no provision is made for the proper training 

 and education of forest officers, and yet forest administra- 

 tion, however wisely the laws upon which it rests may 

 have been drawn, must depend for ultimate success upon 

 the intelligence and enthusiasm of the officers who direct it. 



