TULY II, 1888.] 



Garden and Forest. 



229 



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 FOST OFFICE AT /NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 11, 1888. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Farmers and Forestry. — The Artistic Aspect of Trees. 



II.: Texture. — Note 229 



Palms in Central Florida P. IV. Reasoner. 231 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Goldring. 232 



New or Little Known Plants ; — Philadelphus Coulteri (with illustration), 



Serena IVaison. 232 



Plant Notes: — Novelties at Baden-Baden Max LeichtUn. 233 



Schizophragma hydrangeoides — Benthamia Japonica 233 



The CnerOKee Rose (with illustration) 234 



Cultural Department : — Canterbury Bells \ViUia»t Falconer. 234 



Myosotis dissitiflora — Rockets — Hardy Lady Slippers 235 



Orchid Notes F, Goldritig. 235 



Notes froni the Arnold Arboretum J, 236 



The Forest : — The Forest Vegetation of North Me.\ico. VII C. G. Pritigle. 238 



Correspondence 238 



Periodical Literature 239 



Notes 240 



Retail Flower Markets : — New York, Philadelphia, Boston 240 



Illustrations : — Philadelphus Coulteri, Fig. 40 233 



The Cherokee Rose 235 



Farmers and Forestry. 



MR. A. C. GLIDDEN communicates to the Rural 

 Home some sound ativice to farmers in regard to 

 their wood-lands, and very forcibly points out some of 

 the harmful falacies in regard to forestry, which now too 

 often find a place in periodical farm literature. A great deal 

 of injury has been inflicted upon the material prosperity of 

 this country by irresponsible utterances of writers and speak- 

 ers upon subjects-relating to forestry, and farmers especially 

 have come to look with suspicion upon any advice in re- 

 gard to the care of woods and wood-lands. Such arti- 

 cles, therefore, as the one we have referred to, in which 

 the facts are plainly and forcibly stated that the planting of 

 trees upon farms will not increase the rain-fall, and that 

 trees, like other products of the soil, must be cut when 

 they reach maturity, cannot be too often written or too 

 carefully read. We cannot, however, endorse Mr. Glid- 

 den's statement that there is less and less demand each 

 year for timber and that other materials are replacing it. 

 Statistics show a wonderful increase in the amount of 

 timber consumed in this country, and while the price of 

 poor, half-grown, brash or knotty timber of all sorts, and 

 of inferior tire-wood, has diminished in some parts of the 

 country, good material of certain varieties of lumber have 

 advanced in price in a remarkable manner. This is true 

 especially of the high grades of white pine, of black 

 walnut, hickory, cherry, white ash, and of other choice 

 hard woods. The prices which these woods now com- 

 mand show that they are becoming scarce, and indicate 

 clearly in what direction farmers can increase the value of 

 their properties by a little systematic attention to trees 

 and their cultivation. This is especially true in the case 

 of farmers living in parts of New England and of the 

 Northern and Middle States, where the soil is of a charac- 

 ter which makes the cultivation of trees its only profitable 

 employment. Much has been said about the decadence of 

 New England through the abandonment of its farms, but 

 in all New England there is not an acre of good land 

 really suitable for tillage, which, once cultivated, has been 



allowed to run to waste again. What has so seriously 

 injured New England agriculture, and brought agricultural 

 ruin to its people in many towns, is, that land, which was 

 only fit to produce trees, and which, if managed with the 

 wisdom of true economy, never would have been stripped 

 of its forests, has been cleared. This has often been done 

 at great expense, and then at the end of a few years of 

 unprofitable cultivation, such land has had to be aban- 

 doned. And what was true in New England a century 

 ago, later, and in a greater degree even, has been true in 

 northern New York; and to-day the same wasteful and 

 short-sighted system is working incalculable mischief in 

 Michigan and in other western States. 



The profitable use of lands in the eastern States which 

 cannot be cultivated to advantage is a problem which the 

 farmers sooner or later must solve. Our agricultural popu- 

 lation cannot always continue to go west; the best land 

 west of the Mississippi has been occupied, and not an in- 

 considerable portion of it has already been greatly injured 

 by thoughtless methods of cultivation. As population 

 increases it must depend more and more upon the soil 

 east of the Mississippi for its support; and the prosperity 

 of the country will be great or small as this soil is used 

 wisely or wastefully. 



It is a well established principle in countries where the 

 science and the practice of agriculture are much better un- 

 derstood than they are in the United States, that all land 

 suitable for tillage shall be cultivated and that all land 

 which cannot be profitably tilled shall be covered with 

 trees. No tree is allowed to interfere in the arable land 

 with the best development of its field or garden crop; and 

 the poor soil is planted again as soon as a crop of trees 

 has been taken from it. The boundary between farm and 

 forest is rigidly drawn and strictly guarded. 



A German farmer would as soon allow his cattle to 

 range in his wheat fields as in his forests, which often 

 prove the most profitable part of a European estate. In 

 this country the wooded part of the farm is not cared for 

 nor protected in a way to maintain and increase its value ; 

 it is always used as a pasture in spite of the well known 

 fact that cattle are fatal to a forest ; the trees are either all 

 cleared off at once, without reference to their reproduction, 

 or are so carelessly selected for cutting that the character 

 and composition of the woods are ruined. More care is 

 taken now than formerly to prevent and check fires in the 

 woods, but the damage done to forest property in this 

 country by fire is still an alarming item in the national 

 waste account. 



No system of agriculture can be long successful and 

 profitable which ignores the necessity of cultivating trees, 

 and which does not recognize the fact that much land in 

 every country can only be made profitable by means of 

 trees. The precepts which should be often repeated 

 to farmers are not that trees produce rain or that trees are 

 sacred objects, which cannot be cut without offense to 

 man and nature. The lessons they must learn, if they hope 

 to compete with the farmers trained under more enlight- 

 ened systems of agriculture, are that sterile, rocky, hilly 

 ground cannot long be tilled profitably ; and that such 

 land can only be wisely used to produce trees; that the 

 pasturage of domestic animals in woods or on land only 

 suitable for the growth of trees, is an expensive and 

 wasteful system, as unsatisfactory from a pastoral point of 

 view, as it is fatal to the forest ; that trees are as much out 

 of place in the strong level lands really suitable to perma- 

 nent tillage as cattle are out of place in the woods. And 

 they must learn, too, that wood-lands can only be made 

 profitable when the same care is given to the selection of 

 trees with reference to soil and climate as is bestowed 

 upon the selection of grain and other crops, and that the 

 rules which Nature has established for the perpetuation of 

 forests must be studied and obeyed. 



The belief in the value of forests is increasing in_ this 

 country ; and there has been a marked change in this re- 

 spect during the last ten years. It can hardly be expected, 



