49° 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 512. 



The sum of the matter of park construction is to make 

 rural city parks less pretentious and artificial in design and 

 to so construct them that the cost of maintenance will be 

 reduced to the minimum. This will save money and lessen 

 the danger of exhibitions of bad taste and encourage that 

 simplicity which should be the controlling motive of sin- 

 cere art. 



Mr. Binger Hermann, the Commissioner of the General 

 Land Office, devotes considerable space in his first annual 

 report to the discussion of the forest lands of the national 

 domain and the laws under which they are administered; 

 and among other recommendations asks for a large appro- 

 priation "to sustain a force of forestry agents to check the 

 work of destruction," arguing in support of this proposition 

 that a " well-managed force of agents would shortly prove 

 more than self-supporting through the proceeds derived 

 from the sale of timber effected by the Government." 



The experience of the last twenty-five years has shown 

 what the civil agents of the Interior Department can accom- 

 plish in protecting the property of the Government, and the 

 utter futility of trying to enforce the laws of Congress and 

 the regulations of the Department without the aid of sol- 

 diers, who have shown over and over again their ability 

 to protect successfully and economically forests in the 

 national parks from fire and pillage after the civil officers 

 of the Interior Department had proved themselves entirely 

 incapable of effective action. The nation's forests need pro- 

 tection badly enough, but it is worse than useless to attempt 

 to protect them with the present methods and machinery 

 of the Interior Department, and money appropriated by 

 Congress for the purpose, unless it is to be expended in 

 furnishing a military or quasi-military control in the forest 

 reserves, will accomplish nothing beyond affording oppor- 

 tunity to the Department to pay good salaries to a few 

 more political hangers-on. Every appropriation of this 

 sort ought to fail. 



A better idea of Mr. Binger Hermann's zeal for forest pro- 

 tection than can be obtained from his report will be found 

 in the fact that largely upon his recommendation the great 

 forest reserves of Oregon and Washington have been 

 thrown open to sheep pasturage in direct opposition to the 

 best advice of all scientific men, and with the full knowl- 

 edge of the destructive effects of pasturage in mountain 

 f jrests in this and in other countries. This is one of the 

 things which has been done by the present administration 

 for the protection of forests ; another is the opening of 

 19,951,360 acres of reserved forest lands for entry and for 

 personal and corporate stealing during a period of seven 

 months. Discouraging as all this has certainly been, there 

 is comfort to be found for those who believe in the impor- 

 tance of forest preservation in the gradual change of feel- 

 ing among the people of the west themselves since the 

 discussions which followed the publication of Mr. Cleve- 

 land's proclamations of February 22d last, and which much 

 more than anything that has ever been done have called 

 the attention of the public to the importance of preserving 

 the forests of the national domain. We have always be- 

 lieved that the politicians in Washington who shouted the 

 loudest against the reservations represented only a small 

 interested class of the community which elected them, and 

 that the persons who do not live by plundering the Gov- 

 ernment would, as soon as they understood the meaning 

 and necessity of the reservations, be strongly in favor of 

 them. We are glad, therefore, to find these views con- 

 firmed in a recent issue of Forest and Stream, which has 

 always been much interested in forest preservation, and is 

 usually well informed on the condition of western forests. 

 "A recent investigation," it says, "of the state of public 

 opinion over a very large portion of the west shows that 

 where a short half-year ago entire communities were bit- 

 terly opposed to the establishment of the forest reserves 

 the same communities are now heartily in favor of such 

 an establishment. Where there was bitter hostility there 

 is now cordial friendliness." Nevertheless, it must be borne 



in mind, gratifying as this change of public opinion is, that 

 the persons who want to despoil the public domain are 

 rich, organized and represented in Congress, and that it 

 will be difficult to organize the scattered forces of those 

 interested in preserving the forests in time to make their 

 power felt in Washington before all the really valuable 

 forest property of the nation has been destroyed. When 

 this has occurred, and there are no more valuable forests, 

 and nothing more is to be made out of the public domain, 

 the big mining and lumber companies and their Washing- 

 ton representatives will all favor forest preservation. 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — XI. 



THE Hemlocks (Tsuga) may be recognized by their 

 slender drooping terminal shoots, flat or angled, 

 conspicuously-stalked leaves articulated on persistent bases, 

 which finally become woody, subglobose-stalked staminate 

 flowers produced in the axils of leaves of the previous year, 

 and terminal female flowers maturing in one season into 

 small usually pendulous cones with persistent scales. Of 

 the two sections into which the Hemlock-trees are grouped, 

 the first, Eutsuga, is distinguished by its flat obtuse or 

 emarginate leaves, usually stomatose only on the lower 

 surface, and by small cones rarely exceeding an inch in 

 length, while in Hesperopeuce, with a single species of 

 western North America, the leaves are acute, convex or 

 keeled above and stomatose on both surfaces, and the 

 cones are from two to nearly four inches in length. The 

 genus, which is now confined to North America, Japan, 

 central China and the Himalayas, consists of seven spe- 

 cies, two occurring in eastern North America, two in 

 western North America, one in Japan, one in Japan and 

 China and one in northern India. They are all large trees 

 with thick bark rich in tannic acid and brittle coarse- 

 grained wood. 



The Hemlock which is most interesting and valuable to 

 us here in eastern North America is the native Tsuga Cana- 

 densis, a large tree, generally and widely scattered from 

 Nova Scotia to Minnesota and southward through the 

 northern states and along the high Appalachian Mountains 

 to northern Alabama. The Hemlock, which delights in 

 cool northern slopes, the rocky banks of mountain streams 

 and dark narrow ravines, is one of the most splendid inhab- 

 itants of the northern forest. Too much neglected by 

 those who make parks and gardens in the northern states 

 for less beautiful and permanent foreign trees, no other 

 conifer, nevertheless, which can be used here equals it 

 when a specimen is needed to stand alone on a lawn, and 

 with no other tree can such dark dense masses of foliage 

 be made here. Although usually found in the forest on 

 northern slopes or in shaded ravines, the Hemlock will 

 grow in full exposure to the sun ; isolated trees, however, 

 suffer from the dry cold winds of the late winter and early 

 spring, and it is usually advisable to protect young trees 

 by thick planting. Quick thinning, however, should follow 

 thick planting, for the Hemlock loses its greatest charm as 

 a lawn-tree when it is deprived of its lowest branches, 

 which, with abundant light and air, are vigorous and long- 

 lived, and make an isolated Hemlock-tree, with its long 

 branches gracefully sweeping the ground, a broad-based 

 pyramid of great beauty. Young trees, which are easily 

 transplanted from the woods, grow rapidly in good 

 soil into handsome specimens, and if planters could only 

 disabuse their minds of the idea that a tree is common, 

 and therefore should not be used in ornamental planting 

 because it grows naturally in their neighborhood, there is 

 no reason why this Hemlock should not become one of the 

 greatest ornaments in all northern parks. 



There are a number of abnormal forms of Tsuga Cana- 

 densis in gardens. The most distinct of them was found 

 about forty years ago on the Fishkill Mountains, in New 

 York, and was first cultivated and made known by Mr. H. 

 W. Sargent. This plant, which is now usually called in 

 gardens Sargent's Hemlock, is a bush about three feet high 



