of Rural Art and Taste. 



293 



G-ardeninj]^ in Europe and 

 Austria. 



DR. J. A. Warder, of Ohio, was appointed 

 to represent the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture at the Vienna Exhibition. 

 In a recent address before the Ohio State 

 Horticultural Society, he spoke of the con- 

 dition of horticultural interests. 



Vienna Exposition. — There was a quar- 

 ter section of land appropriated, immediately 

 in front of the Industrial Palace. You must 

 understand that it had been a park, and had 

 been held for that purpose for one hundred 

 years, belonging to the crown, though the 

 property of the people, and given entirely up 

 to them for their use. The soil is what in 

 this country is called bottom land, or the 

 river valley land of the Danube. 



The streets are sixty feet in width, and are 

 lined with double rows of horse-chestnuts. 

 Along these avenues are beer stands, and all 

 the German people drink beer, but I. never 

 saw any of them intoxicated. This beautiful 

 section was grandly presented by the archi- 

 tectural background. 



I was pleased to see the introduction of so 

 very many of our own trees, yet the beautiful 

 tints that many of our trees take in autumn 

 were not seen there. In the midst of all this 

 is a beautiful lawn — and here we may take a 

 lesson from the grass that was sown upon 

 well-prepared ground — and the name of the 

 person who prepared the mixture of seed that 

 was sown was affixed xipon the card. The 

 ground was well prepared, but the thick 

 sowing, and water plentifully applied, in a 

 very short time made it green and beautiful ; 

 and while the soil was so loose that you might 

 not walk upon it without sinking, the men 

 went ahead with great shoes, like snow shoes, 

 and cut the grass, and the women came after 

 and gathered it up. The water was the great 

 thing. Many beautiful fountains — very large 

 — projected very high, and when a dash of 

 wind came we frequently got a ducking. 



Another beautiful feature was their five- 

 fingered creeper, creeping about in the same 

 bright color that it has in this country, and 

 reminded me of home. 



The Doctor gave a full description of the 

 appearance of the various forms of the garden- 

 ing landscapes and of the variegated beds of 

 flowers and plants in all forms and colors, so 

 that the listener could have almost looked 

 down into the fine garden. He said the 

 leaves of many of the plants were yellow, still 

 there seemed to be to him little beauty in 

 these, as they appeared in decline, but to him 

 was nothing so beautiful as green, though it 

 were in any shade. He traveled elsewhere in 

 Europe, and found that the people were great 

 lovers of plants and flowers, and frequently 

 you could see a man with a bushel of earth 

 on his back, and filled with plants, going 

 from door to door, selling them ; and every- 

 where, in almost every house, you might see 

 plants and flowers. 



Forestry in Euro^te, — We sometimes 

 have an idea that Europe is not well wooded, 

 but on account of the small farms, there seems 

 to be, when you look across the county, more 

 wood than there is in fact. The trees are 

 planted along the canal, and streets in Bel- 

 gium, in straight lines, so that there is not 

 the appearance of being so thickly wooded as 

 are the British Isles. In Holland the tree 

 most commorf is one almost exactly similar to 

 the common cotton wood. In some of the 

 more southerly countries the black locust tree 

 is the most frequently seen, and everywhere 

 the trees planted are arranged in straight rows. 

 Along the Lower Rhine forest trees were 

 principally confined to sides of the highways 

 and to refuse land on the hills. Higher up 

 the valley more trees on the hills were to be 

 seen. He noticed the care that was taken 

 when earth was taken from land bordering on 

 the railroad to make "fills," how such fur- 

 rowed out places were carefully scraped and 

 leveled, and planted to trees. There seems 

 to be a sleepless care that no land shall be 

 periBitted to lie waste — that all shall be 

 utilized. The trees thus planted by the 

 railroad authorities were the American black 



