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312 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 337. 



The Devastation of our National Forest Reservations. 



WE have frequently spoken of the necessity of specific 

 legislation for the general management of the 

 national forest reservations. The mere setting apart of a 

 territory by presidential proclamation, without making any 

 provision for the punishment of trespassers, leaves it exposed 

 to timber-thieves, skin-hunters and marauders of all kinds. 

 Last spring the Secretary of the Interior caused a large 

 number <>l notices, conspicuously printed on cloth sheets, 

 to lie posted in various parts of the reservations, so that no 

 one who entered could fail to see them. After stating 

 that the reservation had been created to maintain a water- 

 supply for irrigation and to protect the timber belonging 

 to the people, the notices warned all persons not to settle 

 upon or use any of the lands for agricultural, mining or 

 other business purposes, nor to cut, remove or use any 

 timber, grass or other natural products. The starting of a 

 fire and driving, grazing, pasturing and herding of live 

 stock on the reservations were also forbidden. 



Not long ago Captain James Parker, superintendent of the 

 Sequoia and General Grant National Parks, volunteered to 

 make a tour of the parks and reservations in California. He 

 found that not less than 500,000 sheep were pastured on 

 this national property, and that great damage had been 

 done by them. The herbage was all eaten, and the smaller 

 deciduous trees were girdled. So completely were the 

 parks and reservations devastated of everything which 

 could be used for fodder, that it was often difficult, when 

 away from farms and ranches where feed was stored, 

 for Captain Parker's company to get forage for their horses. 

 The trespassers had manifested their lawless temper by 

 tearing down the notices which had been put up by order 

 of Secretary Smith. 



The dispatch from which we have taken the above facts 

 goes on to say that the Secretary has sent evidences of this 

 defiance of Government authority to the Department of 

 Justice, and that the district attorneys and marshals in the 

 states where the reservations are situated will be notified 

 to prosecute offenders to the full extent of the law. The 

 trouble is that there is no law, and there can be no law, 

 which will be respected by the settlers who live on the 

 borders of these reservations, until a careful study of the 

 whole subject has been made by competent men and the 

 proper adjustment between public and private rights has 

 been decided upon. It will be impossible to prevent tres- 

 passing so long as there is no law to punish trespassers, 

 and it would be quite as impossible to enforce a law which 

 did not, to a certain degree, conform to the best public sen- 

 timent of the states in which the cases are to be tried. 

 Altogether, this group of facts is an additional argument 

 for an investigation of the whole subject by a competent 

 commission and for the establishment, as soon as practica- 

 ble, of a system of management for all our parks and forest 

 reservations. 



North American Thorns. 



THE interesting article in Garden a\d Forest for July 

 25th suggests a note on Crataegus apiifolia, the Parsley- 

 leaved Hawthorn, which is among the prettiest of North 

 American Thorns, and yet it is one that is probably rarely 

 seen. I have a specimen on my grounds that is probably 

 thirty years old, raised from seed which some friend, now 

 unknown, sent to me from the vicinity of Yicksburg, be- 

 fore the war. It has now a trunk about the thickness of a 

 man's arm at the elbow, with the round -spreading head 

 starting about twelve feet from the ground. The branches 

 are extremely slender and numerous, so that the aspect is 

 unique among Thorns. In spring it is a dense mass of 

 white petals, with which the purplish yellow anthers make 

 a pretty contrast. The bark peels off in the same manner 

 as that of the Buttonwood or Plane tree. Strange to say, 

 although we are able to propagate almost anything, no 

 matter how difficult its multiplication is generally consid- 

 ered, we have almost utterly failed to increase this. Bud- 



ding on any other varieties of Thorns we may have at hand 

 has given us but few. Unfortunately, the plant is also a some- 

 what infertile individual, and we have only occasionally 

 been able to get a few seeds and even these have failed 

 to grow. This season there seems a greater prospect of 

 fertility than usual. It would be interesting to know 

 whether any one else has plants in cultivation. Besides 

 our failure above indicated, we have never been able to 

 find any collector who could supply us with seeds since 

 the few originally sent to us. 



As to the difficulty of growing good specimens of the 

 English Hawthorns, I apprehend that they do not object 

 so much to our warm summer climate as they do to the 

 heated soil. Whenever they are screened somewhat from 

 the sun they seem to thrive pretty well. In Philadelphia, 

 on the grounds of the Dundas estate, corner of Broad and 

 Walnut Streets, there is a magnificent specimen of the com- 

 mon English Hawthorn, quite as large as we generally see 

 in the Old World ; but this is protected by a high wall on 

 one side and the wall of the dwelling-house on the other, so 

 that the sun rarely shines on the earth about the roots. On 

 the north end of my own dwelling-house are specimens of 

 the single Red and Double Red, nearly twenty feet high, 

 which are in perfect health and free from all fungous dis- 

 eases, and which make a magnificent appearance in the 

 flowering season. 



Germantown, Pa. rhomaS Median. 



The Progress of Bulb Culture in North Carolina. 



FEW people appreciate the fertility of much of the soil 

 of this section, because of the remoteness of many of 

 its best portions from general routes of travel. The black 

 peaty soils in the counties bordering upon Pamlico, and to 

 a great extent upon Albemarle Sound, are among the best 

 of those which are classed as practically inexhaustible. 

 No prairie land in the west excels in fertility the soils of 

 Hyde and some of the adjoining counties, where, for a 

 hundred years, the land has been in corn, and the farmers 

 declare that they must keep it in corn or it will be as diffi- 

 cult and expensive to clear away the big weeds as it would 

 to subjugate a thicket of brush-wood. All this, of course, 

 is bad farming, for a good rotation would clean the land 

 and make it a paradise of varied products. There is 

 much, too, of this character of soil in all the eastern coast 

 plains along the margins of the vast swamps, which will 

 themselves at some time be reclaimed for farms; and in- 

 termingled with this peaty soil is much higher level sandy 

 land of great natural capacity, but much of it badly worn 

 by careless cultivation. The examples of the truck-growers, 

 however, have demonstrated its wonderful productiveness. 

 In a small area on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, about 

 Magnolia, Rose Hill and Wallace, the cultivation of Tube- 

 roses has been largely developed of late years, and the 

 superiority of the Tuberose-bulbs grown there is such that 

 these places now practically supply the demand for them 

 here and abroad. The diminished popularity of the 

 Tuberose has largely diminished the profit of its pro- 

 duction, though it is still carried on in large areas, 

 and hundreds of thousands are shipped. We have 

 shown that here at Raleigh, upon our dry upland clay 

 soils, we can grow Roman Hyacinths larger than any of 

 the bulbs of this variety now classed as extra in the 

 seedsmen's catalogues ; that we can bloom Gladiolus in 

 one year from the sowing of the seed, and that from fair- 

 sized offsets of Lilium candidum the bulbs after one winter's 

 growth measured thirteen inches in circumference. This 

 constant agitation — if I may use so strong a word — is be- 

 ginning to arouse an interest in the matter, and a recent 

 visit to the Tuberose growers at Wallace showed that the 

 leaven is working well. One grower had raised last year 

 a crop of Roman Hyacinths for a Philadelphia house, 

 which gave great satisfaction, and he is much encouraged. 

 Another grower has this year produced for a Chicago 

 seedsman 75,000 Narcissus Von Sion and a large lot of 

 Roman Hyacinths. We measured some of his bright 



