1896.] Editor’s Table. 563 
EDITOR’S TABLE. 
—PrRoressors in the scientific departments of our schools should 
exercise their influence to prevent the spoliation of nature that is going 
on at so rapid a rate in our country. We do not especially refer at 
present to forest fires which involve so much financial loss that our 
state and general governments are moving in the direction of their 
prevention. In passing, however, we must refer to the railroad com- 
panies as delinquents in this matter, and insist that heavy fines be im- 
posed on them in all cases where fires can be shown to have originated 
from locomotives. We counted from the car windows of a train not 
long since, twelve distinct fires burning near the track in the space of a 
few miles, in a forest covered region not far from Philadelphia, and no 
one appeared to pay any attention to them. 
We wish, however, to refer to the destruction wrought near our cities 
by the uprooting of plants and the breaking off of branches for pur- 
poses of decoration of public and private houses. Within reasonable 
bounds the vegetable world furnishes material for such decoration, but 
the practice is carried beyond the rich resources of nature to meet. 
Our woods are being rapidly stripped of ornamental plants for miles 
all round our large cities. In many regions the Epigea repens is com- 
pletely destroyed, and the blooms of the dogwood and kalmia no longer 
appear. Lycopodia are uprooted over large tracts, and must now be 
brought from considerable distances. Some of the ruin is wrought for 
church decoration, and the girl-graduate is responsible for more of it. 
Teachers of the natural sciences can teach their hearers that this cannot 
go on forever. Especially can they point out that botanical classes 
should not gather arm-loads of orchids of fastidious habits if they do 
not wish to see the localities destroyed or the species well nigh exter- 
minated. 
The authorities in charge of our public parks might, in some places, 
profitably change their point of view. A park should not consist prin- 
cipally of graded paths lined with stone curbs or walls, separated by 
tracts of close shorn grass. Shrubberies of nature’s planting should 
remain, and the vines with which nature festoons the forest should not 
be cut down. No harm is done if there are places where rabbits may 
hide, and wild birds may nest. Even an owl or two might be permit- 
ted to keep down so far as he or she can, the English Sparrow nui- 
sance. In fact, a park is not necessarily a place from which nature is 
