TREES AND SHRUBS OF COURT HOUSE LAWN. 157 



a committee of citizens without challenge. It reads like a 

 correct statement of fact by a -contemporary. It does not 

 interfere seriously with the recollections and verbal statements 

 of Mr. Hewes, and it may with good reason find acceptance. 

 It would seem highh- probable that manj^ of the maples 

 still on the lawn were of a later planting. The slow-growing 

 Turkey Oak and Mossy-cup Oak, and the English Beech, 

 etc., look all of their reputed years, and are, with their 

 accompanying trees, appropriately scattered ; while the sugar 

 maples and the like are more regularly arranged, and have, 

 within the recollection of residents not yet old, overshadowed 

 and been the ruination of specimens of an older growth. Not 

 a few rare species have thus been supplanted, and all record 

 of them is now lost. Official ignorance, also, has been respon- 

 sible for some wanton destruction, for time was when the 

 chief end of man was thought to be the wielding of an axe ; 

 and at one period the custodians of this propertj^ took much 

 pride in the thorough manner in which they had "trimmed 

 up " the lawn and eliminated sundry slow-growing specimens, 

 to the end that those maples " might have a show." Noon- 

 day destruction wasted after this manner until Dr. George 

 Smith and Dr. Edwin Fussell, officers of this Institute, good 

 old gentlemen botanists and tree lovers, friends of John Evans 

 and defenders of his far-brought treasures, cried aloud in pro- 

 test to the Board of Commissioners. Thereupon it was 

 arranged that no more tree cutting should be done without the 

 advice and consent of the Institute. This argeement, how- 

 soever lacking in power to bind the action of subsequent 

 boards, has served more or less as a precedent, and has had, 

 decidedly, a beneficial effect. Choice and rare trees are no 

 longer casually destroyed at the chance whim of a janitor 

 who may perhaps be short of firewood. The very respectable 

 survivors of the collection, duly labelled and under the pow- 

 erful protection of high officials, may reasonably be expected 

 to live out all their davs. John Evans rests these forty years 

 and more in his beloved Radnor garden. Charles F. Hewes 



