January 14, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



13 



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, JANUARY 14, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — The National Forest-question 13 



The Pines at Christmas-time Mrs. Mary Treat. 14 



Winter Flowers in Oregon E. W. Hammond. 14 



Flowers and the Perfume Industry 15 



Notes on North American Trees. — XXII Professor C. S. Sargent. 15 



New or Little Known Plants : — A Hybrid Calanthe. (With figure.) M. B. 16 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter W. Watson. 16 



Cultural Department: — Notes on Some Hardy Wild Roses.— II. ... J. G. Jack. 18 



Winter Pears for Market George Ellmanger. 18 



Bartell's Dewberry. (With figure.) Professor E. S. Goff. 19 



Notes from Wellesley H. G. 20 



Work of the Season W. H. Tafilin. 20 



Orchid Notes M. Barker. 20 



Anchusa Italica E.O.Orpet. 21 



The Forest: — Forest-policy Abroad. — II Gifford Pinchot. 21 



Correspondence : — Tuberous Begonias Quis. 23 



The Owl and the Sparrow IV. H. C. 23 



Recent Publications 23 



Notes 24 



Illustrations :— A Hybrid Calanthe, Fig. 3 I7 



Bartell's Dewberry, natural size, Fig. 4 19 



The National Forest-question. 



THE perusal of the last annual report of the Secretary 

 of the Interior must make it apparent even to persons 

 little familiar with the forest-conditions which prevail in 

 the western half of this continent that the nation's great 

 forest-inheritance is in serious danger, and that the re- 

 sources now at the command of the department are entirely 

 inadequate to protect it. How inadequate these are and 

 how great has become the lawlessness engendered by the 

 way offenses against forest-property have always been 

 condoned in this country, appear in the fact reported by 

 the Secretary that the Canadians have actually invaded the 

 territory of the United States at the point where the Rainy 

 River forms the northern boundary of Minnesota for the 

 purpose of cutting and carrying away timber growing on 

 our public domain. Roads have been built into the forest 

 here and a fleet of steamboats equipped to tow the plun- 

 dered logs to Canadian mills. This is not a more striking 

 instance of the inability of the Government to cope with 

 the dangers which menace our national forests than a 

 dozen others which might be mentioned. Indeed, during 

 the last twenty years the forests of the public domain have 

 been systematically robbed in Minnesota, in Colorado, in 

 California, in New Mexico, and in every state and territory 

 where profit was to be made by manufacturing stolen lum- 

 ber. This illicit industry has developed populous towns ; 

 it has floated ships and equipped mills ; and it has ruined 

 and demoralized entire communities who have learned to 

 forget in the looseness of the American principle of forest- 

 management that there was as great a moral offense in 

 stealing a tree from the public domain as in stealing a 

 neighbor's horse. The Government, and not the people, 

 are to blame for the present attitude of the country toward 

 the nation's forests; and the whole theory under which the 

 western lands have been managed is wrong and demoral- 

 izing. It may have been perhaps good policy once to give 

 farming-land to settlers at nominal prices, although now 

 that the best land is taken up, the time for doing this has 

 certainly passed ; and it is clearly good business for the 



Government to sell its lands for what they are actually 

 worth in the market. 



The conveyance of agricultural land to the settler has 

 always been guarded by law, or, at least, by a semblance 

 of law, and although the system is open to many serious 

 objections, it has had at least the advantage of filling up 

 rapidly large territories. But in the case of the forest other 

 problems have to be met. It was long the principle to 

 allow settlers to cut without restriction such timber as they 

 needed for domestic and agricultural purposes from rough, 

 stony land unfit for farming. Mining companies were 

 allowed to cut all the timber and fuel they needed from the 

 public forests, and railroads were given the same privi- 

 lege. When men are allowed to go out and cut the timber 

 they need upon land which does not belong to them, they 

 will not be particularly careful how much is cut or how 

 the work is done, and the limit set by personal needs will 

 not always be regarded. Lawlessness and utter disregard 

 of forest-property must be the inevitable result of such a 

 system. The authority given to settlers to supply them- 

 selves with timber in this way was taken away some years 

 ago; but now the Commissioner of the General Land Office 

 recommends the enactment of a law repealing statutes for- 

 bidding the entry of rugged, stony or other timber-lands 

 unfit for cultivation except under the mining or town-site 

 laws, and allowing settlers to use the timber on such 

 lands which they may actually need to develop the country. 



The enactment of such a law as the Commissioner recom- 

 mends seems to us dangerous and a menace to the best 

 interests of the country. The forests in all the western 

 country, with the exception of those which clothe the 

 shores of Puget Sound, may be divided into two classes ; 

 those of the high mountain ranges composed of large and 

 often valuable trees, and those on the rugged and stony 

 land of the lower mountain-slopes and foot-hills. It is 

 from these last, if we understand the purpose of the Com- 

 missioner, that the people living in the valleys are to be 

 allowed to cut without control or supervision what timber 

 they require to carry on their farming operations. All 

 these foot-hill forests are stunted and unproductive in com- 

 parison with the forests which grow high above them on 

 the mountains ; the trees are small and stand at consider- 

 able distances apart, and the wood they yield is brittle, 

 crooked and full of knots. To a person accustomed to the 

 forests of Maine or Michigan or Oregon these foot-hill for- 

 ests must appear worthless and their destruction a matter 

 of no importance. Actually, however, they are as valuable 

 as the forests of any other part of the country. It is their 

 proximity to arable land which makes them valuable, ,not 

 the character of the timber they can supply. They con- 

 tain the most available, practically the only, fuel-supply 

 and fencing material for many valleys. When they are 

 destroyed the cost of living on the farms in their neighbor- 

 hood will be immensely increased, and in some valleys 

 agriculture will not be possible without these forests to 

 draw upon. The)'' are. unproductive because the climate 

 in which they grow is not suitable to develop a heavy 

 forest ; and if they are cut down or burned they will re- 

 produce themselves very slowly, or not at all. They 

 require, therefore, more careful management than forests 

 growing under more favorable conditions, and unless they 

 are cut systematically, and guarded in every possible way, 

 they will soon disappear not to spring up again. 



It is proper that farmers in western valleys should get 

 the advantage which comes from living in the neighbor- 

 hood of a forest, but they should be compelled to purchase 

 the fee of the forest-land from the Government if they are 

 bound to destroy the forests, or the Government should 

 itself hold such forest-property for the benefit of the whole 

 community, and so manage it that the whole community 

 will get the greatest possible returns from it. This is what 

 Government forest-management means — the care of the 

 forest for the good of all. 



The American system, which allows settlers or corpora- 

 tions to go into the forests and help themselves and then 



