1 7 8 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 164. 



The trees selected by the birds which I watched were Red 

 Maples, Canoe Birches and Red Oaks. In other localities they 

 attack the Mountain Ash, the Black Alder and some other 

 trees and shrubs. The trees chosen are comparatively young, 

 strong, and well exposed to the sun. Beginning about twenty 

 feet from the ground, on a tree of twice that height, the 

 birds drill a ring of small angular holes in the bark to, and, 

 probably in the majority of instances, through the cambium 

 layer. The holes are so cut as to catch and hold small quanti- 

 ties of the descending elaborated sap. In order to maintain 

 a steady flow of sap the birds drill several new holes each day. 

 They also widen such of the old holes as continue moist, 

 sometimes merging two or more holes into one. New holes, 

 after the tree has once been encircled, are always placed above 

 old ones. It seemed to me that some of the holes yielded 

 much more sap than others, and that the birds observed this 

 and placed the next new holes immediately above these prolific 

 ones. The old holes become dry in time, and the bark cracks 

 near them, thus making the girdling of the tree complete. 

 This is especially true of the Canoe Birch. 



A Red Maple, which I watched for many days, contained 

 over 800 punctures. In August last it was yielding sap so 

 freely that a steady current streamed down the trunk to the 

 ground, while from the best holes bubbles were blown by the 

 sap as it flowed from the bark. This tree was evidently dying. 

 Some of its limbs were dead. Its foliage was scanty, and the 

 leaves drooped in the sunlight. Its sap in July was as sweet 

 as well-sugared water. 



In a hundred acres of woodland which I searched with care 

 for the traces of this bird's operations, I found four families at 

 work in as many separate spots. They were working all day 

 and for weeks in succession. The trees which bore their 

 marks were newly drilled, dying, dead or long dead, and de- 

 caying. In ten years. these four families had killed eighty trees 

 — perhaps more, probably fewer. Lightning and snow com- 

 bined do far more damage than these birds. As a timber- 

 owner, I should not think of shooting these birds for any injury 

 done by them to my forest-trees. With fruit-trees in my 

 neighborhood they meddle little, but it is perhaps because the 

 orchards are old and unattractive. 



Summary. — The Yellow-bellied or Sap-sucking Woodpecker 

 is the most numerous of the Picidce in the White Mountain 

 region. It attacks chiefly the Canoe Birch and Red Maple, 

 and during a considerable part of the summer works through- 

 out every day, draining them of sap. The birds work in fam- 

 ily groups and use only three or four trees at a time. They 

 return to these from year to year until the trees die, when 

 others near by are attacked in turn. The amount of damage 

 done by the birds is insufficient to justify killing them, at least 

 so long as their numbers remain no greater than at present. 



Cambridge, Mass. . Frank Bolles. 



Recent Publications. 



Third Biennial Report of the California State Board of 

 Forestry, for the years 1889-90. Sacramento, 1890. 



An account of the true Pines of California appeared in the 

 Second Report of the Board of Forestry of that state from the 

 pen of the botanist of the board, Mr. J. G. Lemmon, who now 

 supplements this with a paper on the other coniferous trees 

 of the Pacific forest, which occupies the larger part of this 

 third report, and which is enriched with many admirable 

 illustrations made from photographs of trees, forest-scenes, 

 and fruiting branches of many of the species. In this paper, 

 after some remarks upon conifers in general, their history and 

 distribution, Mr. Lemmon describes their classification, and 

 then proceeds to give an account of the different species 

 (exclusive of the Pines) found in California, and in the regions 

 of which California must be considered, from the botanical 

 point of view, an integral part, that is, all the great territory of 

 western America which extends north and west of the state. 

 An account of the different species is preceded by notes on 

 the genera to which they belong, and to this is added some 

 information relating to species which occur entirely beyond 

 the region. In the case of the Hemlock, for example, there is 

 a short account of our eastern species, and of the Asiatic 

 species of this genus ; and under the Spruces, not only are the 

 Pacific coast species described, but the White and Black 

 Spruces of the east as well, the European Spruce, and some 

 of the Japanese species. Changes in the generic and specific 

 rank of a few trees are proposed. The Alpine Hemlock is 

 here removed from Tsuga and made to compose the genus 

 Hesperopeuce (Engelmann's sectional name), a genus charac- 

 terized by Mr. Lemmon by its alpine habitat, its cones, which 

 are longer than those of any Hemlock Spruce, oblong-cylin- 



drical, and two to three inches long, with numerous scales, 

 nearly all of the same size, and reflexed at maturity, 

 broader than long, four to eight lines wide, and striate 

 with a thin, wavy, rounded border ; by the small, spathulate 

 bracts three to four lines long, by the angular seeds 

 with resin vescicles, and elliptical wings, three to six 

 lines long, and linear scattered quadrangular leaves keeled 

 above and below with a solitary and large resin duct. 

 " The propriety," he says, in speaking of this tree, " if not the 

 scientific necessity, of separating it from Tsuga may be justi- 

 fied upon the ground that the conifer family is so large, and 

 the necessity for dividing it into groups for convenience of 

 comparison is so apparent, that comparatively slight differ- 

 ences — so they are fundamental — must be taken for generic 

 distinctions " — a view of genera, in which, we fancy, all 

 students of conifers will hardly concur. 



The large-cone Douglas Fir of the mountains of southern 

 California, which Engelmann considered a variety of the 

 widely distributed Pseudotsuga taxifolia is now restored to 

 specific rank under the name of Pseudotsuga macrocarpa, 

 because the author recognizes " in it elements that certainly 

 point to such separation. It must be borne in mind," he 

 remarks, "that the evidence of distinctness does not depend 

 so much upon the number of characters as upon their 

 permanence. Now the characters of this Spruce are always 

 uniform — no transition trees connect it to the other species. 

 Again, the other species is both north and south of it, particu- 

 larly north. If this big-cone development is a recent variation, 

 what has produced it ? If a southern climate, why are not the 

 Arizona and Mexican trees still larger coned ? If a dwarf 

 variety, why so prolific in fruit?" Mr. Lemmon, in a note, 

 calls attention to the fact that when he visited the headquarters 

 of this tree, in the San Bernardino Mountains, in 1876, " the 

 cones of the preceding year's crop lay on the ground so 

 abundantly that they were two or three feet deep under the 

 trees — a degree of fecundity never observed in the Taxifolia 

 species." 



The Red Fir of the Sierras, Abies magnifica, is well described, 

 and the variety of northern California, which so long puzzled 

 botanists by its long, exserted cone-bracts, resembling those 

 of Abies nobilis of Oregon, is described as the variety Shasten- 

 sis. " The peculiarity of this variety of Fir, aside from its 

 locality, is connected entirely with the fact of its cone-bracts 

 becoming long and protruded, a half to a full inch between 

 the scales, rendering the large purple cones, thus decked out 

 with tasseled fringes, a most beautiful object." The trees of 

 this variety, Mr. Lemmon tells us, are "very large and lofty, 

 though not so immense and high-headed as in the typical 

 southern form, but they become, on the southern slopes of 

 Shasta, a dark, gloomy assemblage of massive black trunks, 

 colored, on the north side, from base to the limbs, with bright 

 yellow lichens or tree-moss, the lower limbs draped, here 

 and there, with long sweeping festoons of black filmy lichen, 

 giving a funereal aspect to the whole scene, scarce relieved by 

 the twitter of a red squirrel, the long wailing note of a wood- 

 pecker, or the occasional cry of a bald eagle." A second 

 variety of this species is distinguished as variety xantho- 

 carpa, "a smaller, less symmetrical tree than the typical, 

 with smaller cones averaging four to five inches long, half as 

 thick near the base, tapering slightly to the apex, and of a yel- 

 lowish color." It is found in the high Sierras around Meadow 

 Lake, Sierra County, where, Mr. Lemmon tells us, it forms the 

 greater part of the noble forest of that region. 



Mr. Lemmon considers the White Fir of the Sierras and of the 

 mountains of southern Oregon simply a somewhat modified 

 form of Abies grandis of the north-west coast, "distinguished by 

 having a rather rigid habit, the branches relatively shorter and 

 stouter than those of Abies grandis. The young shoots are olive- 

 green, the buds ovoid, the leaves dark green above, whitened 

 with stomata below (also with a few rows above), the leaves 

 relatively very long — one and a half to two inches — nearly all 

 of the same length, obtuse at the apex, not usually two-ranked 

 except on lower branches, yet all are twisted half around at the 

 base, which allows the light to reach through to the branchlets 

 past the distorted leaves. It is, in fact, midway both in lo- 

 cality and in characters between the green-leaved and green 

 cylindrical-coned grandis of the moist northern forests and the 

 white-leaved and light green elliptical-coned concolor of the 

 southern arid interior regions." It is this tree which is called 

 Abies Lowiana in English plantations, and which, from a hor- 

 ticultural point of view, is very distinct from the species of the 

 north-west coast, although hardly distinguishable from the 

 long-leaved form of the Rocky Mountains. 



It is not quite clear whether our author intends to consider 

 the California Sierra tree one variety and the Colorado tree a 



