r 



December 26, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



5" 



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. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— Forestry in Pennsylvania 5II 



Destroying Weeds by Act of Congress 51 1 



The Hardy Catalpa in the West Professor Charles A. Keffer. 512 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 512 



New or Little-known Plants :— Quercus Texana. (With figures.) C. S. S. 514 



Plant Notes 516 



Cultural Department: — Some Winter-flowering Plants Robert Cameron. 516 



Achimenes. — III IV. E. Endicott. 518 



The Care of House Plants L. 510 



Subirrigation Fred W. Card. 510 



Correspondence : — Chrysanthemums Naturally Grown J.N. Gerard. 519 



Planting Trees for Autumn Color IV. C. Ega/i. 519 



Recent Publications 519 



Notes - 520 



Illustrations: — Quercus Texana, Fig. 81 515 



Quercus Texana, Fig. S2 517 



Forestry in Pennsylvania. 



IT is two years since the Legislature of Pennsylvania 

 passed an act creating a forest commission charged 

 with the duty of making a survey of the state, and to 

 ■ collect facts as a basis for intelligent legislation. We 

 have had occasion to allude more than once to the sat- 

 isfactory way in which the work of this commission was 

 progressing, and we have borne witness to the fact that 

 Professor Rothrock's illustrated lectures were doing much to 

 enlighten public sentiment in other states as well as in Penn- 

 sylvania. We are not aware that the commission has yet 

 made a final report embodying outlines of all the forest-laws 

 considered necessary, but we have received copies of two 

 bills which are to be introduced in the next Legislature, and 

 which, it is to be hoped, representatives of that state will 

 promptly enact as forward steps toward an enlightened 

 forest-policy. 



The first of these bills provides for the establishment of 

 three separate forest-reservations within certain counties 

 named, each of which shall contain no less than 40,000 

 acres of land in a continuous area. It also provides that 

 at least half of the lands chosen for these reservations shall 

 have a minimum altitude of eight hundred feet above sea- 

 level, and that all of the land shall be of a character better 

 suited to the growth of trees than to mining or agriculture. 

 The Forest Commission is to select these lands, and is 

 authorized to purchase them at prices not exceeding two 

 dollars an acre where this can be directly accomplished, and 

 where this is not possible, full power is given to condemn 

 such lands as reservations for the use and behoof of 

 the commonwealth, subject to such conditions as the 

 legally constituted authorities may impose. It is further 

 provided that the State Geological Survey shall examine 

 the land so acquired and make a report, with accompany- 

 ing maps and illustrations, upon their value as water-sheds 

 and reservoirs ; and that the State Board of Health, the 

 State Board of Agriculture and the Fisheries Commission 

 shall each report every year upon the uses and value of 

 these reservations in relation to the several subjects 

 within their jurisdiction. There is no doubt that these 

 reservations could be made larger to the advantage of the 



state, but it seems to us the part of wisdom to begin 

 moderately as the framers of this bill have done. The 

 subject is one of growing interest, and if the land thus 

 acquired is administered properly, it will certainly create a 

 demand for more, and this demand can be met as public 

 sentiment gathers volume and force. 



The second bill which we have received provides ways 

 and means for educating the people by illustrated lectures 

 on forestry and economic zoology. But, while the state is 

 in this mood for reform, it is hardly probable that the Leg- 

 islature will neglect to make some special enactment for 

 the prevention of forest-fires, which have been so destruc- 

 tive in that state. No efficient guard can be set over the 

 forests without money. Men who can be trusted to serve the 

 state in this direction must be paid just as firemen 

 must be paid for their services in cities. As the case now 

 stands, the great burden of extinguishing fires, when they 

 are extinguished, falls upon the poorest counties, while 

 every part of the state is quite as much interested in the 

 suppression of these fires as these mountain regions. The 

 obligations in this particular ought to be equalized in some 

 way. The State Grange has lately passed some strong 

 resolutions on forest-fires and in favor of the reservation 

 scheme, and their preamble sets forth the facts that floods 

 of increasing severity, due to the removal of large bodies 

 of timber from the high-water sheds of the state, are yearly 

 sweeping away bridges and fences, destroying roads, wash- 

 ing away the soil and covering fertile lands with gravel, and 

 they argue that the time has come for the state to help pro- 

 tect the sources of water-supply from forest-fires and forest- 

 destruction of every sort. 



Since much of the agitation in favor of national forestry 

 can be traced to the zealous labors of the commission, it 

 would seem to be the part of reason to make this body 

 permanent — an established element in the administration 

 of the state, and as regularly provided for by legislative 

 appropriation as any other branch of the Government. 

 Certainly the forest interests of Pennsylvania are of suffi- 

 cient magnitude to deserve such recognition. It may be 

 a question whether the Forest Commission ought to be 

 subordinated to the State Board of Agriculture, or should 

 have an independent position of its own ; but, in any event, 

 there is no doubt that this great state ought not to delay 

 the establishment of some permanent body whose constant 

 duty it shall be to look after the interests of its forests. 



Destroying Weeds by Act of Congress. 



ORE than fifty years ago some of the political 

 farmers of New York state were thrown into a 

 panic on account of an invasion of the Canada Thistle, and 

 it was publicly predicted that this weed would " establish 

 its fatal empire over the whole of North America." Ex- 

 perience has proved that the Canada Thistle is a bad weed, 

 but there are limitations of climate which check its pre- 

 dicted triumph over the continent, and, like other weeds, 

 its progress is always arrested by a barrier of good farms ; 

 that is, where the best crops are produced weeds 

 never gain a foothold, and never have a chance to grow. 

 This law is universal. Weeds do little injury to good 

 farms, and, on the contrary, good farming exterminates 

 weeds. This fundamental truth should be taken into con- 

 sideration whenever the country becomes agitated over 

 some new weed, and although the Russian Thistle is not 

 likely again to frighten Congress from its propriety, other 

 foreign weeds will doubtless make forays into our un- 

 occupied lands in times to come, and we ought to be pre- 

 pared for them beforehand. 



The conquering progress of the so-called Russian Thistle 

 and the bill before Congress to appropriate a million dollars 

 for the relief of the people whose homes and fortunes were 

 said to be threatened by it, furnished the text for a paper 

 before one of the sections of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science last summer, which we hope 

 may be published in some of the journals devoted to 



