238 



Garden and Forest. 



[July ii, i8 



botanist to Long's Rocky Mountain Expedition in 1822, dis- 

 covered in the mountains of what is now Colorado, the only 

 species— 7. Americana. It is a perfectly Jiardy shrub, with 

 slender, erect stems, two or three feet high, the young 

 branches, as well as the peduncles and calyx, clothed with soft 

 hairs. It has small, opposite, pale, serrate leaves, canescent 

 on the lower side, and few-flowered, axillary and terminal 

 cymes of pure white flowers, nearly a third of an inch across 

 when expanded. Although not very showy, this is a good 

 subject for a rock-garden or the margins of a shrubbery. 



June 20th. J • 



The Forest. 



The Forest Vegetation of North Mexico.— VII. 



TWO miles beyond Cusihuiriachic our road escapes 

 from the difificuties of the cafion and mounts to the 

 open plain at an elevation of 6,700 feet. Whenever on 

 our drive from this point to the Sierra Madre we pass low 

 ranges, or the bluffs of dry ravines, or of watered valleys, 

 we find tlieir slopes covered with Oaks, the species Qucr- 

 cus grisea (Q. Emoiyi being left behind at this eleva- 

 tion), and, scattered amongst these, perhaps, a few Pine 

 trees, commonly Pinus Chihtiahuana, more rarely P. ma- 

 crophylla, also. The Papigochic River, as the upper 

 Yaqui is called, flows northward along the eastern base of 

 the Cordilleras for a hundred miles, receiving the numer- 

 ous streams that issue from their cafions, until a little 

 below the town of Temosochic it turns abruptly to the 

 west, cuts a gorge through the mountains, which has 

 never yet been explored by man, and in a distance of 

 about fifty miles to the plains of Sonera falls not less 

 than 4,000 feet As we follow its course to the ford near 

 Tonachic ranch, coming up its eastern bank from the 

 old City of Guerrero, we notice on the mountain-sides 

 opptisite us striking evidence of the severity of the 

 drought, which prevailed over the plateau during the 

 first half of the present year, in broad belts of dead Pines, 

 which still hold their brown foliage. Our Mexican friends 

 assure us that there was scarcely any snow on the moun- 

 tains last winter, and that the little lakes of the plains, 

 brimful of water as we now see them, were for months 

 dried to the bottom. Coming to the ford we find on the 

 low rocky hills and bluffs of the eastern bank both Pinus 

 Chihualiiiana and P. ■mycrophylla, equally numerous with 

 the Oaks; and above the bluffs of the western side on the 

 edge of the plain stand the largest specimens of Pinus 

 Chihuahuana that I ever saw, magnificent trees three or 

 more feet in diameter and sixty feet in height In this 

 situation their roots find a deeper and more fertile soil 

 than usual, yet having the drainage which they require. 



Beyond the river and these wooded bluffs a few more 

 miles of treeless plain, interesting, however, with its wav- 

 ing growth of grass in numerous species, and we enter an 

 open forest of Pitius inycrophylla, whose elevation is 

 7,000 feet, and whose level floor is hidden, not with 

 shrubbery, but with grasses and other herbaceous plants. 

 A little within the forest, at the abandoned site of a saw- 

 mill, our wagon road comes to an end, and there, beside 

 a clear stream which flows past the base of the first moun- 

 tain bench, we rear our tent, turn loose our mules to revel 

 for weeks amidst the luxuries and forage of the neighbor- 

 hood, and ourselves proceed to explore the abundant 

 and strange vegetation by which we find ourselves sur- 

 rounded. 



We see the mountain-sides everywhere deeply furrowed 

 with cafions, some of which are walled high with rock, 

 through all of which, now that the rainy season is pass- 

 ing, tumble noisy torrents. Through one of these canons 

 — one a few miles south of our camp — the Arroyo Audio, 

 or Broad Cafion, whose stream has cut quite through this 

 outer range and drains valleys of the interior, leads a mule 

 trail to Yoquivo and the villages and mining camps be- 

 yond, a lone mountain trail, seventy-five miles it may be, 

 without a human habitation. Each divide between caiions 



leads, by an exceedingly irregular course, perhaps, yet 

 with unerring certainty, up to the summits five miles dis- 

 tant 



Climbing by one of these ridges to the highest ledge 

 which frowns over our valley, the altitude of which, as 

 indicated by an aneroid, is 9,875 feet, we scan with de- 

 light the plains and the jagged mountain chains, over 

 which we have come, the latter appearing blue through 

 the faint haze with their thin mantle of forests, evergreen 

 Oaks and Pines, the former dotted frequently with gleam- 

 ing lakes, and traced by streams whose course is made 

 more plain by straggling lines of trees, Cottonwoods in 

 the lower valleys and Pines and Oaks on the higher por- 

 tions — a pleasant land, which might be a fruitful and a 

 prosperous one but for the lack of rain sustained through- 

 out the year; a region now held by a meagre population, 

 who cannot safely plant their homes except along the 

 rivers, and who maintain a precarious existence by grow- 

 ing, by the most primitive methods, after the deluge of 

 midsummer rains, crops of Corn and Beans on their 

 nearer lands and tending a few herds on the wide areas 

 beyond. 



Looking north and west and south we behold, how- 

 ever, only a sea of mountains, none appearing loftier than 

 the one upon which we stand, everywhere covered with 

 forests, noble forests of Pine crowning broad summits, 

 dense growths of Pine and Spruce and Oak shading the 

 northern slopes and darkening the valleys and cafions, 

 and even the dry ridges and sunnier slopes hidden under 

 close growths of the more dwarf species of Pine, Oak, 

 Juniper and Arbutus. This is the great forest of Mexico, a 

 belt 50 to 100 miles in width and 800 miles in length, 

 the chief source in the future development of this coun- 

 try of its lumber supply, then to be brought out by rail- 

 road trains, not, as we saw all along the road by which 

 we traveled, on the backs of donkeys and mules, or, at 

 best, in the ]iondcrous carts of the country, with wheels 

 hewn from trunks of trees, and drawn invariably by three 

 pairs of oxen. C. G. Pringle. 



Correspondence. ' 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — Not long ago I visited a green-house where a won- 

 derful display is made of old and common plants all devel- 

 oped into well grown specimens. The high back wall was 

 covered with the galvanized wire netting now so cheap 

 and so well adapted for training plants ; it was well 

 covered with plants not commonly considered as clihibers. 

 The first in the row was a specimen of the old Oak 

 Leaf Geranium, Pelargonium qucrcifolinm, which was six 

 feet high and nearly as many broad, though grown in an 

 eight-inch pot. It was completely covered with clusters of 

 bright purple flowers, and was really a revelation of beauty to 

 one who had not thought of the ornamental capaliilities of this 

 plant. Then came a specimen of Abuiilon vexillarium {Aleso- 

 potamicuin) covering about fifty square feet of the trellis, and 

 hungwith countless red and yellow flowers. I learned, for the 

 first time, what an admirable plant itis when well grown. Aspa- 

 ragus tcnuissiinus, in another place, wandered imcut, with shoots 

 ten to twelve feet long, adding a feathery fringe to the Abu- 

 tilon. Then came Jasininiuin grandiflorum, filling the air 

 with its odor, and finally, at the end of the table, the much 

 neglected climber, Lophospcriiiuin scandens, covering a large 

 space with the cheerful green of its foliage and its wealth of 

 rosy-purple flowers. On the centre table were Fancy Pelar- 

 goniums and Fuchsias, such as were seen at horticultural 

 exhibitions before the Ferns and tropical plants absorbed all 

 the space. The Pelargoniums from last fall's cuttings, and in 

 ten-inch pots, were masses of bloom, four feet high, and so 

 sturdily grown that no cluster of stakes was needed to support 

 them, while the Fuchsias, from January cuttings, were pyra- 

 mids five feet high and loaded with flowers. The only plant 

 in the way of a novelty was a large specimen of the double 

 white Petunia, Mrs. Dawson Coleman, which promises to be 

 a great plant for florists' use in summer. In another house 

 was a collection of Begonias of various sorts, all given space 

 for full growth. Here were a Begonia coccinnea, six feet high 

 and four feet in diameter, covered with flowers from bottom 



