December 9, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



577 



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 9, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article : — Mountain Forests and Mountain Streams 577 



A Typical New England View Mrs. J. H. Robbins. 578 



The Colors of Flowers. — II E. Williams Hervey. 578 



Deciduous Shrubs with Late Persisting Leaves J. G. Jack. 580 



New or Little-known Plants : — Hypericum Buckleyi. (With figure.).. C. S. S. 581 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 581 



Cultural Department : — Apples in 1891. — II E. P. Powell. 582 



A Few Good Flowering Plants IV. H. Taplin. 583 



A November Garden J. N. Gerard. 584 



Bacterial Disease of Celery Professor Byron D. Halsted. 584 



Prolonging the Fruit Season M. 584 



The Subjection of Torrents by Reforestation of Mountains. — I. 



M. P. Demontzey. 584 



Correspondence : — The Kbrner Oak Dr. Robert H. Lamborn. 586 



A Precocious Chrysanthemum A. S. 587 



The Nelumbo Joseph Meehan. 587 



Recent Publications 587 



Notes 588 



Illustrations : — Hypericum Buckleyi, Fig. 91.... 581 



The Korner Oak, near Carlsbad, Fig. 92 583 



Mountain Forests and Mountain Streams. 



HITHERTO the people of this country have suffered 

 so little from mountain torrents that reports of their 

 ravages in other lands too often sound like a tale of little 

 meaning, and yet wherever there are high mountains with 

 a sufficiently precipitous slope, and wherever streams flow 

 through material which can be eroded, there is an absolute 

 certainty that the short-sighted policy of clearing away the 

 mountain forest will cause a repetition of the ruin which 

 has been wrought in the French Alps and in many another 

 place within the memory of living men. It is time, there- 

 fore, for intelligent Americans to inform themselves as to 

 what an unchained torrent can accomplish, and we begin, 

 therefore, in another column of this issue, the publication 

 of an article which depicts the devastation caused by these 

 furious freshets, which points out their causes and shows 

 the only way in which they can be subdued. The article 

 is not theoretical merely — that is, it does not state what 

 might happen if certain laws are violated, but it records 

 facts, and it has an especial value because it is prepared 

 by the one man who is recognized the world over as mas- 

 ter of the subject — a man who has not only observed and 

 studied, but who has been the administrative head of the 

 organized forces employed in the most extensive effort 

 ever made to restrain the outbreaking violence of these 

 mountain torrents, and even to subdue them to human use. 

 M. Demontzey, who read this paper before the Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science in Paris, has been in 

 the French forest-service for forty years, and has risen from 

 grade to grade until he is now at the head of one of the 

 three bureaus into which the forest-administration in France 

 is divided. Under his control come all the operations of 

 reforesting, and in his field he is easily the first living 

 authority. As early as 1853 he was engaged in the impor- 

 tant work of reforesting a portion of Algeria, and ten years 

 later he was placed in charge of the immense work which 

 had been recently authorized by law of reforesting the 

 mountains in southern France. The magnitude of these 



operations, and the success with which they have been 

 carried on, give them high rank among the achievements 

 of human science and skill. M. Demontzey has written a 

 practical treatise on " Reforesting and Returfing Mountains," 

 and his book is the authority on that subject. It has been 

 translated into German, Italian, Spanish, and many ex- 

 tracts from it have been translated into English. The fame 

 of his work has reached all countries, and wherever any 

 laws are to be enacted or experiments made which look 

 toward the protection of mountains from eroding streams, 

 a commission is at once sent to France and to Demontzey 

 for instruction. Italy and Austria, England, Prussia, Den- 

 mark and other countries have in this way received direct 

 instruction and inspiration from his labors,.andhis influence 

 will be felt for good in many lands and through many 

 generations. 



The testimony of such an authority ought to have con- 

 vincing weight, and when he asserts that the clearing away 

 of mountain forests renders the soil a prey to rushing 

 waters, it becomes us to inquire how long we can keep on 

 stripping the timber from our own highlands without dis- 

 turbing that stable equilibrium which comes from the bal- 

 ance of opposing forces. It is a wearisome thing to repeat 

 such warnings as this, but if Demontzey, after a lifetime 

 spent in the work of reforesting the devastated mountains 

 of France, finds that the story of it is still fresh enough to 

 interest a body of men of science in the capital of France, 

 we ought hardly to wonder that so little attention is paid to 

 the subject in America. That forests preserve mountains 

 has been demonstrated after fifty years of experiment in 

 France, and that the forest is the only means of restoring a 

 wasted mountain has also been amply proved. Fortu- 

 nately, we stand as yet in no need of such restorative 

 efforts, but it is well for us to know that if we bring this 

 desolation by flood upon ourselves our only salvation will 

 be found in replacing the woods which have been de- 

 stroyed. Dams, retaining-walls and other works of en- 

 gineering skill are helpful, but they are dead barriers only, 

 and avail little against forces full of eager life. The ag- 

 gressive violence of torrents can only be held in check by 

 living agents, which are ever alert, and oppose themselves 

 and their growth unceasingly to counteract and restrain the 

 destructive work of flowing water. There is no safety for 

 torrent-worn mountains until they are clothed again with 

 living trees and vegetation. 



It is more than the work of a day to reclothe a mountain 

 with "rowing- wood, but the law for reforesting the moun- 

 tains has been long enough in force in France to demon- 

 strate that some of the most violent torrents can be tamed. 

 Agriculture has been renewed in places where cultivators 

 had been driven from their farms. Mountains once a waste 

 have been turned into homes for energetic workingmen. 

 Desert slopes, which were not only useless but injurious 

 to the valleys below, are now growing wood, which is not 

 only a protective covering, but it is constantly increasing 

 in value for human use. All this work, however, is accom- 

 plished at an enormous outlay. The labor and cost of the 

 work, and the infinitely greater expense from previous loss, 

 might all have been saved if the mountain forests had 

 been administrated with ordinary prudence. The necessity 

 for reforesting is the strongest argument for preserving the 

 forests which already stand. The lesson we need to learn 

 is not that it may be possible for us at untold expense to 

 follow the experience of France and rescue our mountain- 

 slopes and water-courses after the process of degradation 

 and destruction are under full headway, but on the con- 

 trary, that we may escape all this loss by a timely effort 

 to save the forest, which France is now taking such infinite 

 pains to restore. We hardly need to be taught that the re- 

 forestation of a devastated mountain region is altogether 

 too great an undertaking for private enterprise. But it has 

 been also proved in France that forests are never safe 

 without the protection of some power above that of indi- 

 vidual owners. It is the state alone which can restore 

 wasted forests or preserve those which already exist. 



