H 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 151. 



burn up what is left, saves a great deal of trouble ; and the 

 settlers and the corporations like it and are prepared to 

 fight for its continuation. It is, however, an expensive 

 method in the long run, and it can have but one ending — 

 the injury and finally the agricultural ruin of the region 

 where it is practiced. 



It appears that 310 cases of trespass on the public forests, 

 involving a loss to the Government of more than three 

 millions of dollars, were reported during the year, although 

 only about a hundred thousand dollars were collected by the 

 Government for losses sustained by the illegal cutting of 

 timber. There are, however, still unsettled claims of this 

 sort for nearly fifteen millions of dollars, from which, prob- 

 ably, a small percentage will in time be collected. But 

 trespasses of this sort do comparatively small damage to 

 the national forest. Their greatest enemies are fire and 

 pasturage. As compared with the damage inflicted by 

 these, the cutting down of a few thousand acres of timber 

 more or less amounts to little. The pasturage of sheep on 

 the Calfornia Sierras has already inflicted untold injury to 

 the finest coniferous forests in the world ; and fires in the 

 western forests seem to be increasing rather than diminish- 

 ing every year. They are most frequent and most severe 

 in the dry interior region of the continent, where forests 

 are scanty from climatic causes, and where once destroyed 

 they reappear slowly, or not at all. It is evident that any 

 effort to preserve the forests from illegal pasturage will be 

 resisted in the most violent manner by the people of Cali- 

 fornia, and that the spread of forest-fires can only be 

 checked by determined effort of the Government. Appar- 

 ently it can be accomplished only by the free use of the 

 army as a forest-police, as we have already insisted. 



The attention devoted to the forest-question by the Com- 

 missioner of the General Land Office and by the Secretary 

 of the Interior in their last annual report shows that the 

 public begins at least to realize the importance of doing 

 something to protect the national forests. This is in itself 

 hopeful ; recommendations are not actions, however, and 

 the outlook in Congress for immediate action in the direc- 

 tion of a national forest-system is not encouraging. 



The Pines at Christmas-time. 



TWO days before Christmas, while walking among the 

 Pines in search of decorative evergreens, I found several 

 Golden-rods in bloom. They were growing where a new road 

 had been cut through a swamp. The road was narrow, and 

 the thick growth of underbrush and trees on either side some- 

 what sheltered and protected them. It was the fine thick- 

 leaved species Solidago sempervirens. The road had been 

 made during the summer and autumn, consequently the plants 

 had been cut back or trampled down, and as soon as left to 

 themselves they began to throw up flower stems, and although 

 the mercury had gone as low as twenty above zero, yet here 

 they stood, defying the cold, in different stages of growth. 

 Some just starting to send up flower-stalks, others fully 

 developed and not looking much the worse for the freezing. 

 The foliage was specially fine. 



Among other Christmas treasures we gathered Holly, 

 Mistletoe, Laurel, and the rich purple, fragrant leaves of the 

 Wax Myrtle, and the large, thick, shining leaves of Magnolia, 

 which have a spicy odor in winter more marked than in 

 summer. And we added the Inkberry as well as the bright 

 scarlet berries of the Black Alder or Winterberry, and long 

 trailing sprays of Smilax covered with clusters of purplish 

 fruit. Small branches of Cedar full of dull bluish berry-like 

 little cones were gathered, and with them boughs of Pine, 

 with its delicious invigorating fragrance. There is nothing 

 more handsome for winter decoration than small branches of 

 Pine, its matted bunches of leaves interspersed with the 

 young cones. 



Although we had almost a carriage-load of evergreen 

 treasures, we were still loath to leave the woods on this delight- 

 ful sunny day with the thermometer at fifty in the shade, and 

 we began to study Pine-trees, of which we have three species — 

 the Pitch Pine (Pinus rigida), the Jersey or Scrub Pine (P. Vir- 

 giniand), and the Yellow Pine {P. mitis). The Pitch Pine is the 

 prevailing species in the neighborhood of Vineland. 



This species, Professor Sargent tells us in his " Catalogue of 

 the Forest-trees of North America," " is found from Mount 



Desert, Maine, and northern Vermont, to the upper district of 

 Georgia, not extending west of the Alleghany Mountain 

 region," and adds that it grows from forty to eighty feet in 

 height, with a trunk sometimes thirty inches in diameter, and 

 that it grows in the driest and most barren sandy soil as well as 

 in deep swamps. No other Pine looks as well as this in our 

 gardens among our Cedars and Sassafras, Sweet-Gums and 

 Tupelos. When healthy it grows rapidly, and the younger 

 trees are clothed from base to summit with heavy foliage, and 

 the older ones are rugged and picturesque. 



But from all appearances, in our region at least, they will 

 soon all be killed by insect enemies. No other Pine, as far as 

 I can learn, is beset with so many foes as this. It is a pitiable 

 sight to see large tracts of young trees standing with brOwn 

 foliage, killed outright by various insects. The only way that 

 I have saved the young trees in my garden has been by the 

 most persevering vigilance. One of the most destructive 

 things I have found was the larvae of a small Tortrix-moth [Re- 

 tiniafrustrana), which mines into the terminal buds and young 

 shoots. On some of the trees, when I first found the creatures, 

 there was scarcely a terminal shoot that did not hold from one 

 to five of these destructive larvae. They are completely hidden 

 while at work, and soon destroy the twigs by eating all except 

 a thin shell which is so brittle that it will crumble to pieces 

 when handled. 



My trees were badly crippled by their work, but by the third 

 summer after finding them, I so diminished their numbers 

 that the trees are again growing and looking well. There is 

 no way of killing these larvae after they have become estab- 

 lished in the twigs except by hand picking. But I have found 

 that the moth will not deposit her eggs on the twigs after they 

 are well dusted with Pyrethrum powder. I use a small 

 bellows while the twigs are damp with dew, and apply the 

 powder after each rain. 



Another destructive creature is the larva of the White Pine 

 Saw-fly {Lophyrus abbotii), which eats the foliage. These larvae 

 live in colonies and soon strip a twig entirely of its leaves, and 

 move on to the next, destroying every leaf as they go. But I 

 can manage these creatures much more easily than the Tortrix- 

 larvae. I slip a pan beneath the twig and soon jar them all 

 into it. I have no idea how many broods there are in a sea- 

 son, as I find them all summer long. And even as late as the 

 middle of November I was surprised to find a colony feeding 

 on one of my Pines, after they must have been frozen and 

 ought to have been dead ! 



Although this creature is called the White Pine Saw-fly, it 

 likes our Pitch Pine very much better. I have small White 

 Pines growing in the vicinity of the Pitch Pines, but as yet the 

 former have never been disturbed by the Saw-fly larvae, nor 

 by the Tortrix-moth.* 



But these two insects are not the ones that have killed our 

 Pines in the wood. This has been done by the larvae of 

 beetles, an account of which I must leave for another article. 



Vineland, N.J. Mary Treat. 



Winter Flowers in Oregon. 



ON Christmas-day I counted some half dozen plants, mostly 

 common weeds, blooming here in one of my neighbor's 

 gardens. They were mostly plants which had not perished in 

 the annual drying up of such things here in the latter part of the 

 summer, which is our dry season. Their lives had been pre- 

 served because they chanced to grow in an irrigated and culti- 

 vated enclosure. 



They were: The May-weed {Anthemis Cotula), the Shepherd's 

 Purse (Capsella Bursa-pastoris), the Heron's-bill Geranium 

 {Er odium cicutarium), the Mouse-ear Chick-weed (Cerastium 

 viscosuni), a Lupine (L. micrantha, var. bicolor), the black 

 Mustard (Brassica nigra), the common Knot-grass {Polygonum 

 aviculare) and Boisduvalia densiflora. 



The last is without any common name here so far as I know. 

 It is a near relative of the Godetias, Clarkias, etc. The small 

 flowers are borne in a long, close, densely-leaved spike or in 

 short lateral spikelets, and they are rose-colored or purplish. 

 It is found only in moist ground. A smaller species, B. 

 Torreyi, which blooms in the summer at the same time with 

 this, I find on dry ground only. 



The pretty little white and bluish purple flowers of the Lupine 

 mentioned are out in the spring before those of any other Lu- 

 pine here, and may be seen long after other larger and later- 

 blooming plants of this genus have dried up and died. The 

 Heron's-bill Geranium is the common forage plant, the 

 " Filaree " of California and Oregon. The Shepherd's Purse, 



* Figures of both these insects may be found in Bulletin No. 7 of the "United 

 States Entomological Commission" under the title of "Insects Injurious to Forest 

 and Shade Trees," by A. S. Packard, Jr., M.D. 



