September 26, 1S88.] 



Garden and Forest. 



369 



often raised above the surface of the water on the stout 

 petioles; and by tiie much larger flowers, four to ten inches 

 in diameter when expanded, the petals proportionally 

 broader and blunter than in i\'; odorata. The flowers are 

 scentless, or almost so. The fruit is depressed-globular, 

 with few globular-ovoid seeds, barely enclosed in the aril 

 at maturity. 



N. Iiiberosa is the common Water Lily of Lake Cham- 

 plain and of the waters which flow into it. It has recently 

 been detected in a very depauperate form near Trenton, 

 New Jersey, by Dr. Abbott, and it occurs at Meadville, 

 in Pennsylvania. These are the only places were it has 

 been noticed near the Atlantic sea-board, but it is said to 

 be common from western New York, west and south, but 

 its distribution is not yet at all well known. It is one of 

 the most beautiful of all the Nymphaas, and by far the 

 most beautiful of those which can be grown in the North- 

 ern States without artificial heat, equaling N. odorata in 

 the delicacy of its petals, although the flowers lack the 

 delicious fragrance of that species. 



N. iiiberosa is easily cultivated ; indeed, when once 

 established, it increases so rapidly by means of the 

 detaching tubers and by seed, that it is sometimes difficult 

 to keep it within reasonable bounds. 



The flowers (on cultivated plants) open about eight 

 o'clock in the morning, and close in pleasant weather 

 between two and three o'clock in the afternoon. They 

 open twice or sometimes three times if the weather is 

 overcast. C. S. S. 



The Forest. 



Forestry in Calif(irnia. — I. 



THE first business thought of a practical person in looking 

 at a forest is, What are its products worth— that is, what 

 can be made out of it ? For the products of the forest enter 

 into the life of every one. The varnish of the artist, the rub- 

 ber, the gums, the resins of commerce, the barks of the tan- 

 ner, the corks of the vintner, the handles of our tools, hoes, 

 plows, etc., our dye-stuffs, our wagons, the ties and cars of our 

 railroads, fences and telegraph-poles, furniture, wharves, 

 boats, ships, and in America, even the houses we live in, are 

 largely the product of the forest. Few people appreciate what 

 the annual drain on our forests is ; even such small things as 

 matches consume great amounts of lumber every year; char- 

 coal and fuel are a great drain on our forests; even coal is but 

 a fossilized form of wood. Nuts, fruits and medicines, such 

 as cocaine, quinine, etc., cannot be overlooked. When we 

 thus consider the products of the forest, it will not be a sur- 

 prise to learn that these were estimated in the United States 

 lor the year 18S0 at $800,000,000. The last government stafistics 

 at my command show some of our principal crops to have 

 been : 



Wheat, $474,291,850 



Cotton, 280,266,242 



Gold and Silver, . . . . . . 74,400,000 



Coal 94,500,000 



Iron Ore 20,470,000 



It will thus be seen that the economic value of our forest 

 products is nearly double that of wheat, more than ten times 

 that of gold and silver, and forty times that of iron ore. 

 The census, the agricultural reports, the recorded observa- 

 tions of intelligent men, as well as the individual expe- 

 rience of every one who has by travel become acquainted 

 with the country, show that the consumption and de- 

 struction of our forests now so far outruns their reproduc- 

 tive capacity, that at the present rate in a few years we shall 

 have no forests at all, and their vast crop, valued at $800,000,000 

 a year, must disappear from our census books. We are eat- 

 ing into our capital and providing for no renewal of it. It is 

 not alone the good lumber and firewood taken that we must 

 calculate on, but the waste that accompanies it, and the de- 

 struction annually caused by fire. These the best authorities 

 state to be even greater than the drains of commerce. 



Forest fires destroy every year millions of this, the people's 

 property, and blacken and mar the landscape. Besides, the 

 lumbermen, in the prosecution of their business, waste fully 

 as much timber as they use. In my visits to Mendocino 

 County, and other centres of lumbering activity in this state, I 

 have seen left to rot or burn large portions of the trees felled. 



and, again and again I have seen magnificent trees felled and 

 left untouched because they did not fall right, or for some 

 other trifling reason. In this way much lumber is wasted and 

 firewood enough is annually destroyed to supply the wliole of 

 California for years. 



Besides the waste, this debris in theoft-recurringfires makes 

 an intense flame and heat, endangering all neighboring forests 

 and destroying, often entirely, and always much of tlie woods 

 they traverse; and also the humus in and above the earth. It 

 may be well to say just here to those having lands to clear that 

 it has now been demonstrated thoroughly that burning over 

 land destroys the best part of the soil, and thus permanently 

 injures its producing capacity. The hotter the fire, the deeper 

 it destroys the soil. Experiments in Canada show that a hun- 

 dred years of repose and forest action will often not re-estab- 

 lish the strength and fertility of the soil passed over by hot 

 fires. 



Besides the regular lumbermen, who operate on a large 

 scale, there are numbers of individuals engaged in making 

 shakes, etc., who use only selected trees, chiefly the Sugar 

 Pine, which in this state reaches a great size, is very valuable, 

 but does not readily reproduce itself. To be used advan- 

 tageously for this purpose, these trees must be in certain con- 

 ditions, which can only be told after they are felled. Thus thous- 

 ands of trees, and of the very best, are annuallyfelled and found 

 unsuitable, and left to rot. At the best these men only use about 

 twenty feet of the magnificent trees they cut, th e rest being waste. 

 The Sugar Pine is fast disappearing. The tan-bark men also de- 

 stroy great numbers of trees, taking only the bark. I have 

 - seen in this state, in one place, woodmen destroying trees, 

 cutting off only the branches for firewood, and leaving the 

 trunk and bark unused. In other places the lumbermen leave 

 the branches and firewood, and taking only the trunks; again, 

 tan-bark men leave the entire trees, using only the bark. It 

 may not be a crime to allow such unnecessary waste, but it is 

 iinmitigated folly to be thus throwing right and left a prop- 

 erty that brings us in $800,000,000 a year. 



The forests are also much injured by sheep and goats that 

 are driven into them for a few weeks' pasturage ; these destrov 

 the young trees and pack the ground so that it cannot so 

 well receive and hold moisture. Besides this, the shepherds 

 often deliberately set fires to open the country, or, as they say, 

 to improve the pasture, thus destroying, in one season, more 

 lumber, fire-wood, etc., than the value of all the sheep and 

 goats and their products that have or ever will visit the scant 

 mountain pastures. 



Every considerable government of Europe now has its 

 forestry department. Every one of them gives a net reve- 

 nue. The system pursued is nearly the same in all. Bv it 

 the forests are preserved and increased in area ; at the same 

 time the maximum of fire-wood and lumber consistent with 

 this preservafion is taken out ; no waste is allowed. 



The revenues from these departments show that a large, 

 properly managed forest is a source of income. Sa.xony has 

 a net annual income of $3.25 from each acre in her total for- 

 est area. Alsace-Lorraine about the same. British India, 

 although a new convert and under heavy expenses, had, ac- 

 cording to the last returns in my hands, a net income from 

 her forest lands of over one million dollars. 



All the European governments, save England, which is 

 exceptionally situated, have forest departments served by 

 men instructed in forest schools, some of winch are cele- 

 brated, such as those at Hanover, Aschaftenberg, Minden and 

 Nancy, each department giving more or less net revenue. In 

 Austria, Italy and France considerable works in forest plant- 

 ing, from which little or no direct revenue can be expected, 

 are being done. 



Such desolate places as the Karst, in Austria, and the Landes, 

 in France, are thus being reclaimed. Trees are also beincr 

 extensively planted on the water-sheds of rivers and torrents; 

 in the first case the object is to re-establish regularity of How 

 in the streams, and in the second by preventing the Vapid de- 

 livery of heavy rains from bare surfaces, to reduce and 

 eventually end the destructive action of rivers which are 

 either beds of bowlders or glittering wastes of sand, or rush- 

 ing torrents of turf)ulent water, chargeti with mountain debris 

 and carrying destruction in their course to the valley lands. 

 These works of the foresters are productive to the nation, 

 but show no revenue to their department, a fact that must 

 be taken into consideration in the economic management of 

 forests. But some of these works have become remunerative. 

 The Pine plantations on the south-west coast of France, about 

 Arcachon, to reclaim the desolate Landes, are of these. In 

 that section the sand dunes of the coast were rapidly advanc- 

 ing on the interior in hills over 200 feet high ; fields, houses, 



