June 9 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



221 



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, JUNE 9, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — The Latest Forest Legislation 22I 



Plan of a Country Place in Connecticut. (With figure. )., Charles H. Lozurie. 222 



The Kiora ol Ukiah Valley Carl Pur dy. 223 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 223 



Entomological : — The Pistol-Case- Bearer. (With figures.) !'. II. Lowe. 224 



Cultural Department: — Choice Hardy Plants Robert Cameron. 225 



May Irises J. N. Gerard. 226 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum T. D. Hatfield. 226 



Native Water-lilies William Tricker.i?-] 



Lathyrus rotundifolius, Cypripedium parviHorum J. N. G. 228 



Physalis Franchetti, Cypripedium bellatulum E. O.Orpet. 22S 



The Protection of Roses in Winter Joseph Meehan. 22S 



Correspondence : — Nurseries at South Orange, New Jersey J. N. Gerard. 22S 



A Garden of Roses Danske Dandridge. 229 



Exhib tions : — The Boston Flower Show 229 



Recent Publications 229 



Notes 230 



Illustrations : — Young Pistol-case-bearer, natural size, on an Apple leaf bud. 



Fig. 28 : ., 224 



Young Pistol-case-bearer on opening leaf-bud of an Apple, enlarged 



nearly five decimeters, Fig. 29 225 



The Latest Forest Legislation. 



LAST week the National House of Representatives 

 _j adopted the report of the Conference Committee 

 appointed to adjust the differences of opinion between the 

 two Houses of Congress respecting the forest reservation 

 amendment which had been mounted as a rider on the 

 Sundry Civil Bill. As we understand the situation now, 

 President Cleveland's proclamation of February 2 2d is sus- 

 pended for nine months so far as it relates to eleven of the 

 thirteen forest reservations set apart by executive order, 

 and is only operative in the two which are situated in 

 California. This action was, no doubt, taken because it 

 was urged that time was needed to give settlers within the 

 boundaries of the proposed reserves or near them an oppor- 

 tunity to perfect their titles, but its practical operation will 

 be to give the great mining and lumber companies oppor- 

 tunity to get hold of all the timber they need so that they 

 can continue as they have done to get their forest 

 supplies from land that belongs to the people. It is 

 also an advertisement for everybody else to rush in and 

 seize all they can get hold of, after which, in the language 

 of the amendment, " lands embraced in such reservations 

 not otherwise disposed of before March ist, 1898, shall 

 again become subject to the operations of the proclama- 

 tion." This means that the state forest lands will be given 

 over to spoliation and speculation, as far as practicable, 

 until that date, when, unless Congress passes some worse 

 law at the next session, the remnants of the forests within 

 these eleven reserves will be again withdrawn from sale 

 and entry. The amendment embraces many other features, 

 such as providing for certain surveys, empowering the 

 Secretary of the Interior to sell timber off of all the reser- 

 vations, old and new, to issue permits which will enable 

 miners, prospectors and residents to take what timber they 

 need. Prospecting, road-building and selling of agricul- 

 tural lands are also authorized. Of course, it is a violation 

 of the first principles of safe legislation to add to an appro- 

 priation bill such an important and complicated measure 

 as this. Besides setting aside President Cleveland's action, 

 it clothes the Secretary of the Interior with power to estab- 

 lish a system of forest administration in the old reserva- 

 tions, and a system based on questionable principles, to 

 say the least, and gives him no funds to carry it out. 



And all this was done without any consideration of the 

 report of the committee of the National Academy of 

 Sciences which had been employed by the Government to 

 examine the subject and give such counsel as the facts in 

 their judgment warranted. 



This report was presented to the Secretary of the Interior 

 on the ist of May, and a limited edition has just been 

 issued. The report proper is comprised within thirty 

 pages, but it is long enough to furnish ample data for the 

 justification of all its conclusions. It assumes, and very 

 properly emphasizes, the fact not generally acknowledged, 

 that the forests on the public domain do not belong to the 

 public-land states, nor do they belong to any one section ; 

 moreover, they do not belong to any class — that is, they 

 do not belong to foreign sheepherders, who drive their 

 flocks wherever there is a blade of grass or a tender shoot of 

 shrub or tree ; they do not belong to prospectors or miners ; 

 they do not belong to lumbermen. They are a part of the na- 

 tional heritage, and they are the property of the whole coun- 

 try, of the east as well as the west, and their destruction would 

 mean the paralysis of all our industries and would strike 

 a blow at the agriculture and commerce of the entire land. 

 It is the duty, therefore, of the national legislature to take 

 measures for protecting them. No one's rights are in- 

 vaded when sheepherders are prevented from extermi- 

 nating the forests, and prospectors are punished for firing 

 forests, either willfully or carelessly, because the entire 

 community is interested in them. How much this great 

 national resource suffers from nomadic sheep husbandry 

 the report sets forth in vivid language. It is shown that 

 these "hoofed locusts" not only render permanent forests 

 impossible by the obliteration of all young growth, but 

 they increase the number of fires, because the herders, after 

 destroying every green thing, even on the most inaccessi- 

 ble slopes of high mountains, set fire to the dry rubbish in 

 autumn when they descend to the plains to stimulate the 

 growth of herbage for another year. And fires in the dry 

 western forests, kindled by careless or ignorant prospectors 

 or herders, have wrought devastation that no one can 

 appreciate without a personal examination. There are no 

 statistics to show how great is the area of timber burned 

 up every year, but the committee report that while travel- 

 ing for six weeks through northern Montana, Idaho and 

 Washington and Oregon they were constantly enveloped 

 in the smoke of forest fires. Of course, the country 

 suffers enormous loss this way, because these conflagra- 

 tions once under way among coniferous trees are never 

 stopped until they are put out by a heavy rainfall or en- 

 counter a large river. No human agency can check one 

 of these fires after it has begun to run, and the only hope of 

 saving the woods from destruction is by pieventing them or 

 extinguishing them at the beginning. 



And this leads to the second important proposition of the 

 report, which is that any attempts to protect the forest 

 either from pillage or from the ravages of flocks or of fire 

 have always failed under the ordinary political agencies of 

 the Interior Department. A constantly shifting service 

 with no esprit de corps, no opportunity for promotion, no 

 permanence of tenure, selected as it usually is on the 

 recommendation of men who arc in sympathy with those 

 who prey upon the woods rather than with those who wish 

 to protect them, has never shown any efficiency, and, of 

 course, it never will. On the other hand, the experience 

 gained in managing the national parks proves that 

 they can be protected from pillage and from fire, even in 

 the wildest portions of the public domain, by a small bod) 

 of troops. As a temporary protection, therefore, against 

 depredation and loss, the army, and the army alone, will 

 prove efficient. The committee therefore recommends that 

 each important reserve should lie placed at once in cha 

 of an officer of the arm}', detailed during the season when 

 forest fires are to be dreaded, to report to the Secretary of 

 the Interior and act as superintendent, and that he should 

 be supported by sufficient details of soldiers. Of course, this 

 is not to bring in a revenue, nor yet to establish a system 



