April iS, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



151 



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, APRIL 18, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Lumbering on State Lands 151 



Yellowstone Park 151 



Notes of Mexican Travel): In Jalisco.— VII. (With figure.). .C. G. Prtngle. 152 



Botanical Notes from Texas.— XVII E. N. Plank. 153 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter IV. Watson. 153 



Cultural Department : — Winter Pears E. P. Powell. 156 



Methods of Setting Out Fruit-trees T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 156 



Winter Protection of Half-hardy Plants Professor IV. F. Massey. 156 



Tuberous Begonias as Bedding-plants W. N. Craig. 157 



Fen-aria atrata IV. E. Endicott. 157 



Tecophilea cyanocrocus, Iris Sindjarensis. J. N. G. 157 



Petunias ... E. P. P. 158 



The Chinese Wistaria T. D. Hatfield. 158 



Correspondence : — Hedges for Cold Climates CSC. 158 



Late Frosts in the South-west Lora S. La Mance. 158 



Snow in April Pan ike Dandridge. 159 



Orchids at North Easton T. D. Hatfield. 1 59 



Recent Publications ." 1 59 



Notes 160 



Illustration : — Vigna strobiliphora, Fig. 30 155 



Lumbering on State Lands. 



THE meeting of the American Forestry Association at 

 Albany, in the early part of March, was held in 

 response to an invitation of the Forest Commission of this 

 state, and the reason assigned for holding such a meeting 

 at this place and at this particular season was that it might 

 help the Commission to obtain an appropriation from the 

 state for the purchase of land in the Adirondack reserva- 

 tion. No doubt, also, the Commission appreciated the 

 value of the moral support of the Forestry Association on 

 other points — one of these being the approval of their action 

 in selling spruce timber on the state lands. The Commis- 

 sion had a carefully prepared set of resolutions endorsing 

 their policy. Substitutes for some of these resolutions were 

 presented to the meeting by Mr. Fernow, asserting that it 

 is not advisable to cut and sell any timber from state 

 lands hereafter until a comprehensive and systematic plan 

 of management has been devised, and such methods of 

 supervision instituted as will ensure the permanence of the 

 forest-cover and the reproduction of valuable kinds of tim- 

 ber. Another section affirmed that the practice of cutting 

 all the Spruce above twelve inches in diameter might inter- 

 rupt the forest-cover and impair the future of the forest. 

 Colonel Fox made an energetic protest against these reso- 

 lutions, and although most of the members whose opinions 

 are worth considering favored Mr. Fernow's motion, a 

 straddling substitute presented by Mr. Higley was allowed 

 to pass, mainly because the matter was not considered of 

 great importance one way or the other, and partly because 

 the members were adjured not to vote in condemnation of 

 the Commission whose guests they nominally were. 



In the light of these resolutions, a report which the State 

 Engineer and Surveyor, Mr. Campbell W. Adams, has just 

 made to the Commissioners of the Land Office on the 29th 

 of March, has an especial interest. The Forest Commission 

 had passed favorably on forty-one applications to cut and 

 remove the spruce from various parts of the state land, and 

 had presented them to the Land Office for approval. 

 This Board referred the resolutions to the State Engineer, 

 asking him (1) whether, in his judgment, the trees covered 

 by the proposed contract should be removed; (2) whether 

 the method of removal, as provided for by the Forest Com- 

 mission, is sufficient to protect the trees not removed ; and 



(3) whether the prices agreed upon were fair. Upon the 

 last point the bargain was said to be largely in favor of the 

 purchaser, especially since he was not required to pay the 

 state any money until the end of three years, so that really 

 the state furnishes so much capital for the lumbermen's 

 stock of 250,000,000 feet, which can be cut from the 80,000 

 acres of state land which these forty-one contracts cover. 

 Nevertheless, if the privilege was sold to the highest bidder 

 the price cannot be called unfair. 



The first two propositions, however, Mr. Adams answers 

 with, emphatic negation, and his vigorous argument 

 ought to convince any one that neither the rights of the 

 people nor the future of the forest have been properly 

 considered in these contracts with lumbermen for the 

 timber on state lands. It is very plain that after being 

 lumbered under contracts like the ones proposed, all the 

 Spruce ridges will be strewn with a net-work of tree-tops 

 and limbs strong enough to hold up under the burden of 

 the next winter's snow, and this, after a season's drying, 

 will furnish tinder to kindle at the touch of the first spark 

 into a fire which would sweep through the forest with re- 

 sistless force. Every one of these ridges, once burned 

 over, will lose at once and forever its chief value to the 

 state — that is, its value as a preserver of water. The con- 

 tract provides that the purchaser shall cut his trees in a 

 "workmanlike manner," and that means in accordance 

 with the practice of skilled American woodsmen. Every 

 one knows that it is workmanlike for a logger to fell his 

 trees so that he can move his logs at the least expense and 

 not to fell them withaview of saving the small trees which 

 they may crush. The removal of logs in -a workmanlike 

 manner implies cutting roads to the streams, and it means 

 what is still worse, damming the streams for driving, and 

 the water thus set back about the roots of the trees above 

 will kill them and leave a fringe of death about every 

 lake and along every stream. 



Some documents which accompany this report, notably 

 a letter from Mr. Morton S. Parmelee, a lumberman of 

 Malone, in this state, and another from the Committee on 

 Forestry of the New York State Association for the Protec- 

 tion of Fish and Game, strongly reinforce the arguments of 

 the State Surveyor. In addition to the great increase of 

 danger from fire, it is shown that these contracts offer a 

 much freer opportunity for trespassers. A block of timber 

 with an unbroken frontier can be protected, but a block 

 broken by radiating lumber-roads opens avenues for tres- 

 pass on every side. It is argued, too, that the revenue 

 which is expected from the sale of timber will be largely 

 consumed in the added cost of protecting what is left from 

 fire and timber thieves ; that, indeed, it would take the en- 

 tire militia of the state to watch the park when once cut up 

 in this way. The few dollars which the state will receive 

 for the timber, after the increased expense of management 

 and protection is subtracted from it, will be a pitiable offset 

 to the loss of integrity which the forest will suffer. In 

 short, this policy, if consistently carried out, will leave 

 hardly one acre of primitive woods in the wilderness out- 

 side of private reserves, or a single place where its original 

 beauty has not been marred by the ravages of man. Be- 

 sides this, the deer, which are helpless in heavy snow, will 

 be at the mercy of the men and dogs about the lumber- 

 camps when every thicket of Spruce, where they find shel- 

 ter, is invaded by loggers. At the opening of the session 

 the Governor stated that the standing Spruce timber above 

 twelve inches in diameter has already been sold on more 

 than seventeen thousand acres of state lands. This means the 

 ravage of twenty-seven square miles of timber, itself a park 

 of magnificent proportions, and these new contracts cover 

 four or five times as much more territory. It would seem 

 that the time has already come when the park ought to be 

 preserved from its preservers. 



If the buffalo in Yellowstone Park had been properly 

 protected they would now have numbered some four or 

 five hundred, but it seems to have been proved that a very 



