February 21, 1S94.] 



Garden and Forest. 



7i 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



FUBL1SHED 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, FEBRUARY 21, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article :— Mr. Vanderbill's Forest 71 



Notes for Mushroom-eaters. — V. (With figures.) . . . Professor IV. G. Farlow. 72 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter .... IV. Watson. 73 



New or Little-known Plants : — Darbya umbellata. (With figure.) C. S. S. 74 



Cultural Department: — Propagation of Chrysanthemums T. D. Hatfield. 76 



Poinsettias IV. N. Craig. 76 



Chinese Orchids A. B. IVestland. 76 



Annual Flowers from Seed. — II J. A". Gerard. 77 



Border Flowers in February J. N. G. 78 



Correspondence : — The Beauty of Orchids Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. 78 



Recent Publications 79 



Notes.' 80 



Illustrations :— Boletus subtomentosus. Fig. 13 72 



Section of Boletus subtomentosus, Fig. 14 72 



Clavaria aurea, Coral-fungus. Small specimen, life-size — edible, Fig, 15.. 73 



Darbya umbellata, Fig. 16 75 



Mr. Vanderbilt's Forest. 



THE appearance of the short report which has been 

 lately published on the forest operations instituted on 

 Mr. George W. Vanderbilt's estate of Biltmore, near Ash- 

 ville, North Carolina, marks what must be considered a 

 most important step in the progress of American civiliza- 

 tion, as it records the results of the first attempt that has 

 been made on a large scale in America to manage a piece 

 of forest property on the scientific principles which prevail 

 in France, Germany and other European countries where a 

 dense population has compelled a more careful husband- 

 ing of all natural resources than the American people, made 

 reckless by the apparently inexhaustible richness of their 

 country, have not thought it necessary to emulate. A 

 century of waste, of careless cultivation, of an excessive 

 cutting of forests, and of a still more destructive reign of 

 forest fires, have, however, worked their inevitable results, 

 and thoughtful men long ago began to recognize the fact 

 that unless some method of perpetuating the forests of the 

 country could be devised, its agricultural ruin was merely 

 a question of time. 



A great deal has been written during the last ten years 

 in the United States about the importance of preserving the 

 forests of the country, and the subject is one that has 

 appeared attractive to orators of various degrees of ability. 

 But example is better than precept, and it has been left to 

 Mr. George W. Vanderbilt to set an example in forest 

 management which is likely, as the years roll by, to have 

 a momentous influence on the prosperity of this country. 



The report on the Biltmore forest is written by Mr. Gif- 

 ford Pinchot, a student of forest management in the best 

 schools of Europe, and a man fully alive to the advantages 

 and disadvantages of the different methods in their appli- 

 cation in this country. The Biltmore forest, as mapped 

 and described in this report, is composed of about 4,000 

 acres, or just one-half of the whole estate, although, since 

 this forest was first laid out, Mr. Vanderbilt's holding of 

 forest property in the same region has been very largely 

 increased, so that his forest operations may be expected to 

 assume in the future much more important dimensions. 



The Biltmore forest, as Mr. Pinchot found it, was com- 

 posed chiefly of Oaks and other deciduous trees, mostly 



young, with scattered Pines which occasionally covered 

 old and exhausted fields to the exclusion of other species. 

 The forest was broken and irregular in character, owing to 

 the fact that the land had been divided among many small 

 farmers who had made frequent clearings or had robbed 

 the forest, depleted of its young growth by browsing 

 animals, of its most vigorous and healthy trees. The soil 

 produced by the disintegration of an ancient gneiss, inter- 

 mixed with pegmatitic quartz, is a stiff sandy loam of con- 

 siderable depth, but not rich in plant-food or specially 

 favorable to the growth of trees. 



Mr. Pinchot's scheme, as he sketches it in his report, 

 proposes three general objects — a profitable production 

 which will give the forest direct utility, a nearly uniform 

 annual yield which will give steady employment to a 

 trained force of foresters, and a gradual improvement in 

 the present unsatisfactory condition of the forest. These 

 objects he proposes to obtain by -two methods of manage- 

 ment. On the east side of the French Broad River, which di- 

 vides the estate, the regular high-forest system will be adopt- 

 ed, and on the west side the selection system. The rotation — 

 that is the length of time allowed for a second crop to be- 

 come ripe on the same ground after the removal of the 

 first crop — has been fixed at one hundred and fifty years. 

 In a theoretically perfect forest, managed under this high- 

 forest system, there are as many subdivisions as there are 

 years in the rotation, the trees of each subdivision being 

 of an equal age and only one year older or younger than 

 those of the next subdivision. In this way it would be 

 possible to cut every year one one-hundred and fiftieth of 

 the whole area, thus securing a uniform annual crop dur- 

 ing the whole period. In the selection — forest trees of all 

 ages are mixed together instead of being separated in 

 groups according to their ages. The annual product is 

 taken from all parts of the forest, the ripe trees being 

 selected for cutting ; but such a method necessitates, in 

 the case of a large forest area, expensive transportation, 

 and to avoid this Mr. Pinchot has adopted what he calls 

 the localized selection system, under which the annual 

 yield is taken from a certain part of the forest during 

 several years, then from another part, and so on. 



Mr. Pinchot's balance-sheet, covering the first year's 

 operations of the Biltmore forest, shows an expenditure of 

 $9,911.76, with receipts amounting to $5,607.11, and 

 material on hand worth at local market prices $3,91 1.25, 

 or $9,519.36 in all, showing a deficit of only $392.40. In 

 the year 1S93, as we are informed, this deficit became 

 a surplus of more than $1,200— certainly a remarkable 

 result, in view of the poverty of the forest he had to 

 operate in and the difficulties which are always attendant 

 upon the establishment of a new industry, especially in 

 one like this, where all his assistants and workmen had 

 to be formed from the very beginning. 



Mr. Pinchot may, perhaps, consider himself unfortunate 

 in the character of the existing forest-covering of the land 

 which has been placed in his hands to manage, as the 

 poverty of the soil over much of the area embraced in the 

 Biltmore forest will prevent its rapid rehabilitation and 

 probably preclude the production of timber of the first 

 class. On the other hand, however, he is especially fortunate 

 in having secured a constant demand for fire-wood within 

 easy reach of the forest and on the estate itself, without 

 which, or some steady local demand, it would be impossible 

 for him to carry out his plans of improvement by cutting 

 except by a prohibitive outlay of money. 



A forest, like any other piece of agricultural property, is 

 more or less profitable in proportion to its ability to pro- 

 duce material for which there is a demand at remunerative 

 prices ; and while it is certainly true that a virgin forest 

 composed of trees of the first class would yield larger re- 

 turns under scientific management than can ever be ob- 

 tained from the Biltmore forest, it must be borne in mind 

 that an example like this, provided the forest can be made 

 to yield a fair return on the investment, will be of greater 

 value to the country as an object-lesson than one where 



