November 25, 1S91.] 



Garden and Forest. 



563 



publication of another's species, under just such protest, but 

 with the certain effect of securing to the species its earliest 

 proposed name in case of its acceptance as a species, was done 

 over and over again by Dr. Gray, as by many another eminent 

 botanist. I have never before heard the tenability of such a 

 name called in question, and I am sure the verdict of botanists 

 would be that, as an indubitably valid name for the Texan Red 

 Bud, C. reniformis antedates C. Texensis by forty-one years. 

 University of California. Edward L. Greene. 



[The point made by our correspondent relates to one of 

 those questions of nomenclature about which different au- 

 thors have maintained different views. The name Cercis 

 reniformis is not Engelmann's, for he never published it. 

 It is not Gray's name, for Gray did not adopt it, although 

 he referred to it in the work cited by Professor Greene. 

 Brewer & Watson mentioned it in "The Flora of Cali- 

 fornia" (1876) with a short descriptive phrase, so that they 

 must be considered the real authors of Cercis reniformis, 

 whether that name is retained or is considered a 

 synonym. — Ed.] 



The Acorn Crop. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — Referring to the failure of the acorn crop in Minneso- 

 ta, as recorded in a note in your issue of October 2 1st, I would say 

 that in this section acorns are very abundant. The Bur Oaks, 

 of which there are numerous cultivated trees here, are unusu- 

 ally full. So also are the White Oaks, Swamp White Oaks, Rock 

 Chestnut Oaks, Black Oaks, Scarlet Oaks, Red Oaks, Pin Oaks, 

 Spanish Oaks, Post Oaks, Black Jack and Willow Oaks, all of 

 which are here in their wild state. That there are no acorns on 

 the Minneapolis Bur Oaks is the reverse of what I should expect. 

 I have occasion to be interested in the acorn crop every year, 

 and think I can safely say that, as a rule, a failure in one part 

 of the northern states means a failure in all parts of them. 

 That is, if the Scarlet Oaks of a given locality fail to yield 

 acorns it is almost useless to look elsewhere for them, and 

 the same is true of all other kinds. But this rule does not 

 hold good in the southern states. To my knowledge, for per- 

 haps twenty-five years past, demands there for acorns of Quer- 

 cus Catesbcei and Q. aqiiatica, made yearly, have always been 

 met. Referring again to the Bur Oak, the large specimen in 

 Bartram Park here is unusually full of fruit this season, but a 

 tree of Q. lyrata, which is near it, has hardly an acorn on it. 



Germantown, Pa. Joseph Meehan. 



Periodical Literature. 



As represented on a detailed map of any important county 

 in any of our states, says Mr. Isaac B. Potter in the November 

 Forum, our country roads show an enormous extension, and 

 "three of our states can be easily selected in which the total 

 length of public roads, exclusive of town and city streets, is 

 greater than the combined mileage of all the railroads in the 

 world." Mr. Potter is the secretary of the New York State 

 Roads Improvement Association, and his article, called "The 

 Profit of Good Country Roads," is therefore entitled to earnest 

 attention. How does he describe the condition of the public 

 ways in question, after noting the immense sums which, in 

 deference to the demands of capital — for the profit of individ 

 uals and corporations more immediately than for the profit of 

 the people at large — the nation has spent in the establishment 

 of commercial centres, in the development of railroads, in the 

 improvement of river-ways and harbors, and the extension of 

 telegraphic lines ? "With the enlargement of concentric cir- 

 cles surrounding every American inland town," he says, "is 

 to be found an apparently undue diminution of agricultural 

 population, wealth and thrift." And this is because "the dirt- 

 road, that only avenue of communication which connects the 

 farmer socially and commercially with the world at large . . . 

 is the same road that was used a hundred centuries ago by the 

 naked savage when chased by a storm to the sheltering cave, 

 and from him seems to have descended as an entailed legacy 

 to the American government. In all these years it has not 

 changed, except that the modern article is more or less 

 churned and mangled by narrow wheel-tires and flanked by 

 costly and useless fences — two species of property unknown 

 to our primitive ancestor and first conceived at that later 

 period which marked the dividing-line between instinct and 

 imbecility. Measuring a million miles or more in its various 

 ramifications, dissolving in the rains of April, baking and pul- 

 verizing beneath the rays of the midsummer sun, drifting and 



disappearing in the whirlwinds of November, and presenting 

 at all times but little more than a roughened streak of soil to 

 serve as a land highway for the great volume of internal traffic 

 the time seems to have come when the American common 

 road may rightfully assert itself as the most expensive and by 

 all odds the most extravagantly maintained of all the public 

 institutions. To the intelligent foreigner who comes to our 

 shores the American 'system' of road maintenance is little 

 short of ridiculous; to the thoughtful and inquiring native it is 

 only a kind of legalized negligence, a relic of feudalism bor- 

 rowed from England in the old days of governmental poverty 

 and placed in the keeping of the most patient and long-suffer- 

 ing of our industrial classes, who have gradually been led by 

 'the ensnaring wiles of custom ' to endure and embrace it." 

 Then the author declares, and all sensible men will agree with 

 him, that an understanding of the pecuniary benefits of good 

 roads "is a national question; for these roads are the com- 

 mon care and property of all the nation, and any effect which 

 grows out of their improvement must be found directly in the 

 economic condition of the persons and property within their 

 widened influence." 



We cannot follow Mr. Potter through the explanation he 

 then gives of the condition of American farms, illustrated by 

 many facts and figures, showing how vastly the number of 

 small holdings has decreased in the west during the past ten 

 years while the extent of very large ones has correspondingly 

 increased, and calculating the future need for good common 

 roads by estimates of the rate at which the agricultural pro- 

 ductiveness of many regions may be expected to augment 

 during the immediate future. We can merely recommend 

 his article to all good citizens as the most scientific exposition 

 of the matter which has yet come under our eyes, and, there- 

 fore, of course, the most convincing. He then quotes the 

 experience of foreign countries to show the value and ultimate 

 economy of good systems of. road-management, and likewise 

 of a few American counties where experiments in this direc- 

 tion have been made. He cites, for instance, the testimony of 

 a resident of Union County, New Jersey, where forty miles of 

 telford and macadam road have been built at a cost of $10,000 

 per mile, which declares "that the property in Union County 

 has actually appreciated in value far more than the cost of the 

 roads, and this not only in cases of sale or exchange but upon 

 the tax-levy. Notwithstanding the fact that $300,000 worth of 

 county bonds have been issued to build these roads, and the 

 interest must be met annually, the tax-rate has not been in- 

 creased in the county, or in any city in the county, in conse- 

 quence of the extra interest-expense ; and it is but fair to say 

 that the actual appreciation of property due to the increased 

 value of lands benefited by the improved roads meets the in- 

 creased taxes already. And none of our roads have been com- 

 pleted for more than a year, and some parts of them only 

 within the present month. As an advertising medium alone 

 they have been worth what they cost. ... It is safe to say 

 that the citizens and taxpayers of Union County would not go 

 permanently back to the old system, with its old roads, if they 

 were paid many times the cost of the new roads." 



The agitations in favor of new roads recently begun in sev- 

 eral states are then mentioned by Mr. Potter, and a deserved 

 tribute is paid to the services of the "League of American 

 Wheelmen," whose 25,000 members have done a vast amount 

 of careful, conscientious, systematic work io the way of col- 

 lecting statistics, printing and circulating information, and 

 studying the best methods for improving the present state of 

 things — work which has, of course, been largely inspired by a 

 sense of their own personal interests and yet has been carried 

 on in a truly public-spirited way, and will unquestionably con- 

 duce very greatly to the benefit of the people as a whole. In 

 conclusion Mr. Potter says that he believes "the signs are 

 hopeful, and the future of the American road is full of prom- 

 ise." Work for its improvement is already " well in hand," 

 and he is cheered by the thought that soon "the government 

 and the states will be brought to adopt that beneficent princi- 

 ple of statecraft which leads a nation rightly and fully to exer- 

 cise its paternal functions and to direct the public hand to the 

 aid and development of that great branch of industry which 

 was born with the birth of the nation itself and upon the suc- 

 cess of which all national wealth must eventually depend." 



Notes. 



A chute in the logging camp at Clifton, Oregon, is described 

 as one of the longest in the world, measuring three-quarters of 

 a mile. Its bottom is shod with railroad iron, and, on ac- 

 count of its smoothness and the steepness of the descent, logs 

 traverse it in the space of twenty seconds. 



