45° 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 508. 



at home at Wodenethe, where there are a number of noble 

 specimens with green and with yellow foliage in perfect 

 health. The Torreyas have all disappeared, but Cephalo- 

 taxus is well represented by the Japanese T. drupacea, and 

 by the Chinese T. Fortunei, which has grown into a low 

 bushy tree of dense habit and brilliant foliage, and is now 

 one of the most beautiful plants in the whole collection. 



Of the exotic trees with deciduous leaves the most re- 

 markable, perhaps, is a specimen of Magnolia macrophylla, 

 a perfectly-balanced tree, about fifty feet high and fully 

 fifty feet across the branches. The European Beech shows 

 its value in our climate by large and healthy specimens of 

 the Weeping and the Cut-leaved varieties. The yellow- 

 flowered Buckeye (/Esculus octandra), a native of more 

 southern forests, is perfectly at home at Wodenethe, as are 

 the Kcelreuteria, the Yellow Wood, the European Linden 

 (T. platyphyllos) and the Gleditsia. The form of our 

 southern Bald Cypress (Taxodium), which in gardens 

 usually passes as Glyptostrobus pendulus, has grown well 

 and appears perfectly healthy, and large masses of the 

 Chinese Magnolias show the permanent value of these 

 trees in the northern states. 



It has been seen that the list of exotic trees which, sur- 

 viving at Wodenethe for more than forty years, have 

 proved themselves really satisfactory there is not a long 

 one. In the shortness of the list is to be found, however, 

 the true significance and the real value of Mr. Sargent's 

 drendrological experiments, which seem to show clearly 

 that American trees are the best for America, and that the 

 most permanent living ornaments of our parks and planta- 

 tions must be sought in the American silva, with such 

 foreign trees as experiments like that at Wodenethe may 

 from time to time show to be long-lived in our climate. 



Mr. T. Jefferson Coolidge, of Boston, the treasurer of 

 the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company at Manchester, 

 New Hampshire, which is one of the largest companies of 

 its kind in the world, calls attention, in his last report to 

 his stockholders, for the second time to the present and 

 increasing disposition of the Merrimac River, on which 

 his company is largely dependent for its power, to run in 

 the extremes of sudden freshets and very low water, 

 caused, he believes, by the denudation of the hills and 

 mountains about its sources. The whole question of pre- 

 serving the forests in northern New Hampshire, and 

 especially in the White Mountain region, is important 

 and difficult. In this elevated region head many of the 

 streams, which become the principal sources of power for 

 mills in New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts, 

 and their preservation would clearly benefit the manufac- 

 turing interests of New England. To its forests, too, the 

 White Mountain region, which is the best summer sani- 

 tarium in the north-eastern states, owes its chief charm and 

 principal attraction ; and if the destruction of these forests 

 is allowed to continue, the value of this whole region both 

 as a source of water-supply and as a resort for summer 

 tourists will be ruined. The people of New Hampshire 

 might wisely follow the example set by this state and pur- 

 chase the forest land covering the whole of the elevated 

 region in the northern counties and hold it as a public 

 forest ; but the people of New Hampshire are poor, and 

 public sentiment would hardly authorize at this time an ex- 

 penditure of several million dollars for such a purpose. As 

 a number of the streams which rise in this region flow 

 through more than one state, the aid of the general Gov- 

 ernment might be invoked. The preservation of these 

 forests, however, could be much more securely obtained 

 by the intervention of private capital and the formation of 

 a corporation to acquire and hold forest property under 

 conditions which would insure a perpetual forest covering. 

 The large corporations directly interested in the flow of 

 these rivers might become stockholders in such a corpora- 

 tion and control its policy. The owners of summer resorts 

 in the White Mountains who would be benefited by the 

 preservation of these forests might find it for their interest 



to subscribe to its stock, and doubtless individuals actuated 

 by one motive or another might be willing to contribute to 

 its success. A great forest property of this sort might, if 

 economically managed, become fairly profitable in the 

 future, and there is no reason to doubt that it might be 

 made to pay small dividends almost from the beginning. 

 The permanency of such property ought to influence 

 investors, and the time is not far distant when certain 

 annual returns of two or three percent will seem attractive 

 to conservative persons. 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — VII. 



SCIADOPITYS, which is the first genus of the Taxodi- 

 neae which we shall consider, is monotypic and 

 remarkable in the character of its leaves which are deltoid 

 in form, concave, minute, and simple in character, while 

 the apparent leaves are phylloid shoots from the axils of 

 the true leaves. The male flowers are collected in dense 

 catkin-like heads at the ends of the branches, and the cones 

 are erect on short lateral shoots. The genus is monotypic 

 and endemic to Japan. Like the Ginkgo, Sciadopitys was 

 for a long time known only from a few individuals culti- 

 vated in temple gardens and from a large grove on the 

 hill in Kyushu, in the neighborhood of the ancient monas- 

 tery-town of Koya. This grove was once supposed to be 

 the original home of the species ; it is more probable, 

 however, that all these trees were planted many centuries 

 ago. Dupont, a French engineer, found what he consid- 

 ered indigenous trees on Chimono and in the Province of 

 Meno ; and in this province, below Nakatsu-gawa, I found 

 great numbers of Sciadopitys growing, as I thought, indi- 

 genously and sending up their narrow pyramidal heads far 

 above the Pines and other forest trees. In a country, how- 

 ever, which has been densely populated for centuries, and 

 where tree-planting has been a recognized industry for 

 more than a thousand years, it is not always easy to deter- 

 mine whether what may appear to be a perfectly natural forest 

 has not been planted. In these mountain forests of Meno the 

 Sciadopitys grows with a tall, straight trunk to a height of 

 nearly a hundred feet, and is always remarkable in its narrow 

 compact pyramidal head of dark and lustrous foliage. This 

 tree is so abundant here that the wood, which is nearly white 

 and very strong and straight-grained, is a regular article of 

 commerce, being floated down the Kisogawa in large rafts 

 to Osaka, where it is chiefly consumed. Except in the 

 immediate neighborhood of this Mono forest, Sciadopitys 

 does not appear to be cultivated in Japan except in temple 

 gardens, where specimens picturesque in old age, with 

 loose habit and pendant branches, may occasionally be 

 seen carefully protected by low stone railings. 



Sciadopitys verticellata, which owes its common name 

 of Umbrella Pine to the arrangement of the phylloid shoots 

 near the ends of the branches after the fashion of the ribs 

 of an umbrella, has been an inhabitant of our gardens for 

 twenty-five or thirty years, and is perfectly hardy in the 

 neighborhood of Boston and one of our most distinct and 

 beautiful garden conifers. Although for several years it 

 grows very slowly and is difficult to raise from seeds, the 

 Umbrella Pine grows rapidly when it is once established, 

 and at the end of twenty-five years may be expected to 

 attain in good soil a height of eighteen or twenty feet, and 

 for many years to retain the dense, compact pyramidal 

 habit which is characteristic of this tree, except in very old 

 age. There is a Japanese variety with shoots marked 

 with yellow which is occasionally cultivated in gardens. 



Of Sequoia and its two California species, the last rem- 

 nants of a race which once abounded in the Arctic Circle 

 and was widely spread over this continent and Europe, 

 little need be said here. The Redwood (Sequoia semper- 

 virens), the tallest of American trees, can only flourish 

 where winters are mild and moisture abundant, and I have 

 never seen a specimen on the Atlantic seaboard north of 

 Charleston, South Carolina. The Big Tree, Sequoia Wel- 

 lingtonia, is hardly more valuable for our plantations. A 



