July 28, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



291 



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. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article :■ — The Ad minisf ration of the Forest Reserves 



The Douglas Spruce. (With figure.) 



The Effects of Wind on Trees Professor J. B. S. Norton. 



A Chrysanthemum Disease. (Willi figure.) Professor B. T. Galloway. 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter W. Watson. 



Plant Notes ■ . 



Cuitural Department :— Notes on Crinums J. N. Gerard. 



Flower N otes. . . . 6". A. 



Zonal Pelargoniums William Scott. 



Three Good Conifers J. L. 



The Bermuda Lily Disease Professor B. T. Galloway, 



Correspondence : — Electrical Attraction of Trees .Rosa G. Abbott. 



The Vitality of Seeds T. D. Hatfield. 



Taxation for Municipal Improvements Benjamin Dobliu. 



Roadside Notes Dorcas E. Collins. 



Recent Publications " 



Notes 



Illustrations: — Sun-print of a diseased leaf of Chrysanthemum Philadelphia, 

 Fig. 37 



Douglas Spruce, Pseudotsuga taxifolia. Fig. 3S 



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298 

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300 



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295 



The Administration of the Forest Reserves. 



THE Hon. Binger Hermann, Commissioner of the 

 General Land Office of the Department of the Inte- 

 rior, has lately issued a circular of rules and regulations 

 for the government of the forest reserves. These rules are 

 approved by Secretary Bliss, and they are promulgated in 

 accordance with the amendment to the Sundry Civil 

 Bill, which was approved June 4th, and which authorizes 

 the Secretary to establish such a service and to prescribe 

 such rules as will insure the objects for which the reser- 

 vations are created. 



Many of these rules are in a line with the scheme of admin- 

 istration advised by the Committee of the Academy of 

 Sciences, while others directly contravene the principles 

 there laid down. At the outset, however, it may as well 

 be said that the character of the rules published by the 

 Secretary is not a matter of serious practical moment. He 

 has not the machinery nor the money to enforce them. 

 Many of his predecessors have been earnest in their desire 

 to check timber depredations on the public lands, to miti- 

 gate the dangers to the forest from fire, and to protect the 

 mountain slopes from the pasturage of hoofed animals 

 which destroy the forests wherever they tread. Like his 

 predecessors, Mr. Bliss will be compelled to rely upon 

 employees appointed for political reasons, and many of 

 them in full sympathy with herders and speculators and 

 prospectors and timber thieves who have had their way 

 unchecked ever since they drifted into the west. Indeed, 

 these men have always been allowed to use the forests as 

 if they owned them in fee simple, and they naturally resent 

 any attempt to restrain them by federal interference as an 

 infringement upon their rights — rights which they feel that 

 they have acquired by long usage, even if they do not rest 

 on definite statutes. There have always been rules and 

 regulations enough to protect the property of the United 

 States, but, of course, the rules are not able to enforce 

 themselves, and naturally no great energy has been 

 expended in their enforcement when this work has been 

 entrusted to political appointees, often selected from 

 the districts which they are to oversee. It is true that 

 cases are brought to trial, but no one expects local courts 



and juries to take the matter seriously, so that attempts to 

 enforce the laws have been farcical. Rules have not yet 

 been able to prevent individuals or corporations from 

 cutting timber wherever they choose on some pretext or 

 other, or from selling it in a distant market, whenever this 

 could be made profitable. They have not prevented sheep 

 from following each other up steep mountain slopes in 

 long procession and trampling out ditches to facilitate the 

 gathering of floods to lay waste the plains below. They 

 have not prevented flocks and herds from gnawing every 

 green thing to the ground — grass, herb, shrub and seedling 

 trees — so that the snows will melt more quickly. They 

 have not prevented herders from burning over league after 

 league of mountain slopes to furnish fresh herbage for 

 their flocks in spring and insure the desolation of the low- 

 lands by floods, and the filling up of agricultural intervales 

 with debris from the mountains. 



It may be said here that a portion of the forest property 

 owned by the nation has been to a certain extent exempt 

 from these ravages. Nothing can arrest a forest fire when 

 it has gathered full force and is sweeping through the dry 

 and resinous woods of the distant west. But there is such 

 a thing as preventing fires and checking them at the outset. 

 Eversince the Yellowstone National Park has been patrolled 

 by a troop of United States cavalry that vast territory has 

 suffered comparatively little in this respect. There are 

 three national parks in California, and while the surround- 

 ing forests have been imperiled by sheep-herders, a small 

 detachment of United States troops have sufficed to avert 

 the danger. These object-lessons and similar ones in 

 Canada and other countries so plainly indicate the proper 

 way to preserve our forests from its worst enemies that we 

 can only express regret that the first bill recommended by 

 the National Forestry Committee has not already been passed 

 at the extra session of Congress. This bill provided that the 

 Secretary of War should be directed, upon the request of the 

 Secretary of the Interior, to detail troops to protect the 

 forests, timber and undergrowth on the public reservations 

 and on the national parks until a permanent forest bureau 

 has been authorized and organized. 



It is no fault of the Secretary of the Interior that he can- 

 not call upon the army with the assurance of any assistance 

 under existing laws. It is no fault of his that the construc- 

 tion of roads in the reservations is authorized, although 

 with the force and information at his command this will 

 mean that any one who wants a road will get it where he 

 likes, and every time one of these roads is built it means 

 new danger from fire over a large territory. The Secretary 

 must make regulations for the location of mines and the 

 procuring of timber for certain uses ; but without any force 

 at his command to compel obedience to his restrictions, 

 this means that anybody can procure timber and locate 

 mines and do generally what he likes. Section 13, how- 

 ever, seems to us distinctly a step backward. If we under- 

 stand it, the pasturing of cattle is permitted in all reserva- 

 tions, and sheep are allowed to range in the states of 

 Oregon and Washington, although they are shut out from 

 other reservations. This exception is made in favor of the 

 extreme north-western states because "the continuous 

 moisture and abundant rainfall of the Cascade and Pacific 

 coast ranges make rapid renewal of herbage and under- 

 growth possible." Now, the fact is that the eastern slopes 

 of the Cascade range, and all the ranges of eastern Wash- 

 ington and Oregon, are arid, and these are the places where 

 sheep are most abundantly herded. On the other hand, 

 where the undergrowth is luxurious, there is an additional 

 temptation for the shepherds to tire it in order to get it out 

 of the way. This regulation is made against the experience 

 of all other countries where domestic animals have ever 

 been allowed to browse in the forests, and it is contrary to 

 the expressed judgment of the National Academy, which is 

 the scientific adviser of the Government and the body 

 authorized to give counsel in such cases. The situation is 

 this: One Secretary of the Interior asked advice of the 

 National Academy, and the National Academy distinctly 



