November 3, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



437 



pay more attention to thinning their fruit and to giving 

 more space about the trees for the free circulation of 

 air. With plenty of room about the trees and for the indi- 

 vidual fruits upon the branches, the judicious spraying and 

 removal of all mouldy fruits and dead twigs a grower may 

 reasonably expect to be comparatively free from this pest, 

 provided his neighbors take the same precautions and the 

 season is not excessively wet and cloudy. 



Experiment Station, New Brunswick, N. J. By 1011 D. Halsted. 



The Forest. 



Natural Reforestation on the Mountains of 

 Northern Colorado. — I. 



THE traveler through the mountain region of northern 

 Colorado, even though he make only casual observa- 

 tions, cannot fail to be impressed with the extent of the 

 devastation that has been wrought by forest fires. One 

 may ride for miles through regions where the destruction 

 came in very recent years, as is shown by the black- 

 ness, the entire absence of living vegetation and the utter 

 desolation. On other areas the general appearance marks 

 the destruction as more remote ; many trees are rotting on 

 the ground ; from those standing the bark has been worn 

 away, and their bleaching trunks remain, white and ghostly, 

 the last relics of a once grand forest. On these areas other 

 vegetation has started, and some are sufficiently covered 

 with Grasses and Sedges to afford good pasturage for stock. 

 Here and there are thick groves of young Aspens, bordered 

 with scattering shrubs, Elder, Buffalo-berry, Shad-bush, 

 Currants and Gooseberries, or the whole may be covered 

 with a growth of shrubs intermingled with scattering Pines 

 and Spruces. Sometimes this new coniferous growth is 

 scanty, and again it is abundant, covering the whole sur- 

 face and forming dense forests. Other areas must have 

 been denuded at a still earlier period, and here the evidence 

 of a former forest growth is reduced to a few rotten rem- 

 nants of stumps or trees. Some of these areas are now 

 timbered with new coniferous growth, others are nearly 

 barren of vegetation. 



In addition to these districts that bear evidences of 

 having been at some time denuded of forest growth by 

 fires, there are at middle elevations (7,000 to 8,000 feet) 

 areas of considerable extent that do not now show any 

 signs of ever having been timbered. They are the rounded 

 tops of low mountains, or the exposed plateau-like terraces 

 that lie between them. These are usually rocky, or at least 

 gravelly, and may be entirely bare of timber or sparsely 

 covered with the Yellow Pine. By far the greater portion 

 of the injury to forests has been done in the middle-altitude 

 region (from 7,000 to 9,060 feet), although the effects of fire 

 can be traced in places from the foot-hills at 6,000 feet 

 nearly or quite to timber-line. The forest areas yet re- 

 maining intact are mainly those of the subalpine belt, from 

 9,500 feet up to timber-line. Their escape from destruc- 

 tion is due in great part to the prevailing moist condition 

 of the high zone. The winter snow body is usually heavy, 

 and so slowly does it yield to the summer sun that the 

 saturated condition of the soil holds through the season, 

 and it rarely happens that conditions exist favorable to the 

 spread of fires. The snowfall is commonly less at from 

 9,500 feet and downward, and it disappears early in the 

 summer, and there follows a period favorable to the spread 

 of fire. 



Estimates of the areas that have been devastated in this 

 region are very unsatisfactory. The abrupt and broken 

 contours of the region, the irregularity in the forest bodies 

 and in the burned districts make it exceedingly difficult to 

 form an accurate opinion. Such estimates as I know of are 

 crude approximations, and I may as well pass the ques- 

 tion with the general statement that the area is very 

 great. 



During the last eight years several trips have been made 



through the mountains of Larimer County to the crest of 

 the Front Range, or over the Medicine Bow Range and on 

 across the continental divide west of North Park, and I 

 have noted with much interest the progress of growth in 

 Nature's effort to reclothe denuded . areas. The observa- 

 tions have suggested numerous interesting questions which 

 in the main are unanswerable because of the entire absence 

 of records, or of reliable information as to the time when 

 certain areas were burned. It would be interesting to 

 know with some degree of exactness the time required to 

 start a new forest growth on a burned area, but recorded 

 observations are wanting. Some areas may and do remain 

 bare for long periods, while others will develop new growth 

 within a comparatively few years. The time may thus 

 vary greatly, because growth is so dependent upon local 

 surroundings. Denuded areas in the subalpine region, 

 where the rainfall is commonly greater than below, show 

 the influence of the abundant moisture in the quantity and 

 vigor of the herbaceous vegetation which first follows a 

 fire, but observation leads me to the conclusion that in the 

 higher altitudes the forest trees are much slower in starting, 

 and that they start in less numbers and develop much more 

 slowly than in the lower regions. 



That several years commonly elapse between the burning 

 and the starting of new coniferous growth seems indicated 

 by the two following observations, the first in the Canon 

 of the Cache la Poudre, on a tract that was burned, accord- 

 ing to reliable authority, in the summer of 1881. As 

 examined in 1894, thirteen years after burning, grasses 

 were abundant among the dead logs, there were a few 

 shrubs, and a scattering growth of Pines (Pinus contorta, 

 var. Murrayana), the largest of which was twenty inches 

 high and seven years old. Here it was apparently six years 

 after the fire that the first Pine-tree started. The other 

 observation was made on a tract extending south and west 

 from Chambers Lake, which was burned over in July, 1890. 

 I passed through the burned district a month after the fire, 

 and was greatly impressed with the absolute desolation. 

 No green thing remained ; the ground, and everything 

 upon it, was clad in somber black ; animal life was absent, 

 and there was something so oppressive in the desolate 

 solitude that 1 was glad to reach green timber again. A 

 second visit to this tract was made four years later, in 

 July, 1894, and it was with a feeling of keen disappoint- 

 ment that I noted how slight a change four years had 

 wrought. The intense blackness had been subdued in 

 some degree by the action of the elements ; some trees 

 had fallen and others were losing their bark, but the gen- 

 eral appearance of desolation remained. A very few strag- 

 gling plants of Grasses and Sedges were the only evidences 

 of returning vegetation. 



Colorado Agricultural College. Charles S. Craildall. 



Recent Publications. 



Flowers and their Friends. By Margaret Warner Mor- 

 ley. Boston: Ginn & Co. 1897. 



We recently spoke favorably of this author's book entitled 

 A Few Familiar Flowers, and the present volume, which is 

 addressed to children, and young children, too, apparently, 

 confirms the impression then made that the author knows 

 how to write about scientific subjects in a way to attract 

 those who are addressed. To give children some notion 

 of the ecology, physiology and histology of plants as under- 

 stood to-day is no easy task, and we can forgive the pursu- 

 ance of some rather cheap methods if the end is really 

 attained, as it has been, we believe, in this case. Whether 

 in teaching children it is necessary to intersperse so much 

 loquacity we will not consider; but we are sure that some 

 of it might have been omitted in this book with advantage. 

 The teaching itself, so far as we have seen, is correct and 

 modern, and the subjects in some cases so well presented 

 that parents as well as children may find profit in the 

 instruction. 



