THE SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 443 



Jicsoh'cd, That a committee of five bo appointed to ])rcpare and present to 

 Congress a memorial on the importance of early action in tlio appointment of a 

 commission to visit the various countries of Europe, to make a thorough ex- 

 amination of the forestry system of those countries, and at as early a date as 

 possible, make a full report of tiie same. 



ORNAMENTATION OF FARMS. 



The following remarks relative to a subject very interesting to owners of 

 farms or tracts of land in or near to towns or villages, were made at the meet- 

 ing of the New Jersey Horticultural Society, by E. S. Carman, of River Edge, 

 Bergen county, N. J. After impressing npon his audience the necessity of 

 closely adhering to nature in tlieir efforts to copy her, he said : 



*' Our first motive in embellishing our grounds is to render them as attrac- 

 tive as possible, that they may become the dearest spots on earth to us. To this 

 end, if we are to have but fifty trees and shrubs, let every one be different, and 

 as different as possible. Let us have no pairs or triplets, or quadruplicates of 

 anything — as if every'tree needed a sentinel, or as if it were afraid to stand alone,, 

 or as if two or more individuals were needed for the completion of one another. 

 Here to the right we have a maple. There to the left, situated relatively to 

 other objects precisely the same, another maple — each the ghost of the other. 

 Both are thrifty, shapely, fine. They are so nearly alike we can detect no dif- 

 ference. Nothing is to be learned — no impression formed from looking upon 

 both that is not as well formed from looking upon one. Why then have both? 

 Why uotphave in the place of one of them another species or genus that cre- 

 ates a new impression and gives additional food for pleasurable study? And 

 yet these monkey grounds, as we may call them, are the rule whithersoever we 

 go. A mile or so from my own residence is a lawn planted with arbor-vita? — 

 in rows as we would plant an orchard — and with little else but arbor-vitae. 

 They are, perhaps, fifteen feet in height, and all of the same stiff, conical, 

 monumental form. I never pass this jolace without being reminded of a burial- 

 ground with evergreen tombstones I 



" We are instructed by the books at first alluded to that ' there is something 

 unpleasing ' in the introduction of fruit trees among elegant ornamental trees- 

 on a lawn — one class of vegetation suggesting the useful and homely alone ta 

 the mind, and the other avowedly only the ornamental. Tliat apple or pear 

 trees, so mingled, do produce an unpleasing impression upon the mind is, in 

 the main, true enough. But does not the fault lie rather in the mind than in 

 the apple and pear trees? If there is a tree that combines the beautiful of all 

 trees — picturesqueness, flowing lines, symmetry — it is the apple when given the 

 same care that our favorite ornamental trees receive. And little less need be 

 said of the pear. I once saw — 25 jards off in a garden — a tree so compact, so 

 shapely, that I hastened nearer to ascertain what it was. The impression of its 

 exceeding beauty remained unchanged until I discovered that was a Seckelpear 

 tree. Then it lost a part of its 'exceeding beauty.' I would use fruit trees as 

 any other in ornamental grounds — but it is a mean taste that excludes them,, 

 because they are useful as well as ornamental." 



1 



