2o6 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 





made to this part of the garden are ponds for the cultivation of the 

 Koyal Lilies (Victoria Regia and V. Cruziana) and other water plants 

 a group which is a particular favorite of the head gardener, Mr. 

 James Gurney, who has originated several beautiful and remarkable 

 hybrids and seedlings in it. 



The arboretum, which for some reason was planted with the trees 

 in rows, as in a nursery, has always been kept in a less polished condi- 

 tion than the flower garden, affording opportunity for the spontaneous 



growth of many of the wild 

 plants of the region indeed, 

 a portion of it has never been 

 plowed, and its prairie vege- 

 tation is left undisturbed by 

 the scythe until after the 

 year's growth is finished. It 

 contains a varied collection of 

 trees, many of them now of 

 mature growth, though the 

 tornado which devastated St. 

 Louis in 1896 destroyed some 

 of the choicest of them and 

 mutilated others. In its park- 

 like character, the arboretum 

 affords a restful change from 

 the more formal flower gar- 

 den, and its studied air of 

 neglect is not the least of its 

 charms. With the growth of 

 the manufacturing interests 

 that have necessarily followed 

 the lines of the great railroads 

 passing not far from the northern and western limits of the garden, 

 has come a considerable change in the possibility of growing peren- 

 nial plants, and particularly coniferous evergreens, which, intolerant 

 of smoke to a degree scarcely surpassed except among the lichens 

 which I have never seen growing in the garden have gradually suc- 

 cumbed, until, notwithstanding constant efforts to replace them, they 

 have all but dropped out of cultivation. 



In the so-called fruticetum, which, from the nature of its present 

 use, is kept closed to the ordinary sight-seer though always opened to 

 those to whom its contents are of real interest, is growing, in addition 

 to the shrubbery properly constituting a fruticetum, a small collec- 

 tion of the fruits best adapted to the climate of St. Louis, replacing 



In the Arboretum. 



