88 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 418. 



the king's wild beastes for rest, which two woords (For and 

 Rest) being pat together and made one woord, is Forrest, or 

 a Forrest, taking his name ot the nature of the place, which is 

 priuiledged by the king for his wild beastes, to have their safe 

 abyding in for rest. 



It should be added that a more recent philology derives 

 the word "forest" from the Latin "fores," meaning "out- 

 of-doors." But, although we have discarded Man wood's 

 definition, both of the word and the thing it denotes, the 

 traces of the view he represents still remain in the Scotch 

 "deer forests," which often do not contain a single tree. 

 Nor will it be apt to disappear even in this country while 

 great game preserves, such as the Yellowstone National 

 Park, continue to be of like conspicuous public service. 



The question of boundaries, with which the book pro- 

 ceeds, is of comparatively little interest to us, because forest 

 boundaries, such as are here in question, do not exist in the 

 United States ; but the second chapter, which deals with 

 protection against avoidable damage in the use of the 

 forest, is of direct value. The sections on bad felling and 

 careless conversion are full of excellent practical advice, 

 and, with a few additions and subtractions, would be 

 models for use in this country. Among others less appli- 

 cable the author recommends the following precautions, 

 which are not only germane, but are deserving of wide- 

 spread use in this country : 



Measures for the prevention of mischief are: (1) Employ- 

 ment of competent and trustworthy woodcutters, and careful 

 supervision of their work. It is generally advisable to employ 

 the same men year after year, and to withdraw from the gang 

 all those who fell badly, and encourage the best men by in- 

 struction and higher wages. (2) Throwing trees on to bare 

 spots and not among young growth. (3) Careful felling of 

 coppice with sharp instruments and with a clean and sloping 

 cut. (4) Avoidance of throwing felled trees on to rocks, stones 

 or other stems ; felling uphill or sidewise, so that there may 

 be a minimum of breakage. 



Forest pasture is another practical matter intimately con- 

 nected with the needs of forestry in the United States. 

 Speaking of the damage done by goats the author says : 



To take some out of the many instances of the destruction 

 of forests by goats : In the Tyrol and southern Switzerland, 

 and in the Himalayas, fine forests have been completely de- 

 stroyed by them, and in Ajmereand Merwara, whose hillsides, 

 where vegetation once flourished, have been laid almost bare, 

 with nothing left but deformed, thorny shrubs. In France, since 

 1665, goats have been excluded from all forests managed by 

 the State Forest Department, and no legal right can be en- 

 forced to graze goats in private forests, as the grazing of these 

 animals is considered incompatible with the maintenance of 

 the underwood. 



It is true that conspicuous damage on a large scale has, 

 so far, been done in the United States only by sheep, and 

 that notably on the Pacific slope. Similar damage, longer 

 continued, and. therefore, with far worse consequences, has 

 taken place in the Alps of southern France. To this the 

 writer does not refer, but the extent to which the summer 

 pasturage of sheep was carried there may be gauged by 

 the fact that flocks of fifteen to twenty thousand head were 

 frequently driven into the mountains from the lowlands. 

 Monsieur Boppe, the present Director of the French Forest 

 School, mentioned in a lecture which I had the pleasure of 

 hearing that one flock, which he had himself seen, occu- 

 pied seventeen hours in passing over a bridge thirteen feet 

 wide. 



The third chapter, on Forest Offences, has only a poten- 

 tial interest here, and the same is true of the chapter on 

 Forest Servitudes. It will be an enormous advantage when 

 Government forest management comes to be introduced, 

 that rights of user cannot accrue on the public lands of the 

 United States. In India, on the contrary, nearly all of the 

 Government forests were at one time burdened with these 

 rights. At present they have been settled (which does not 

 at all mean extinguished, but only limited and defined) on 

 about 80,000 square miles of Government forest-land, while 

 50,000 more are still under settlement. With an annual 

 budget of about eighteen million rupees, Mr. Ribbentrop, 



the present Director General of Forests to the Government 

 of India, estimates that the cost of prescriptive rights to the 

 Forest Department is at least equal to that of its whole 

 establishment. Yet, in spite of this fact, the forests yield 

 an increasing net annual revenue, which now amounts to 

 nearly three million dollars. _,.„. ,„. . , 



New Vorlc. Glfford PlIlCllOl. 



Exhibitions. 



Eleventh Annual Exhibition of the Architectural 

 League of New York. — I. 



T30STERS and book-covers, jugs, curtain-poles, hat-racks 

 *■ and burnt wood table-tops are not things of the highest 

 intrinsic importance, and they have but the slightest connec- 

 tion with architectural art; yet, in this architectural exhibition, 

 scores of things of these and similar kinds, and of designs for 

 such things, have good places on the well-lighted walls of the 

 galleries, while a series of very interesting park and garden 

 designs, including some of the most important of Mr. Olmsted's 

 recent works, are consigned to the walls of the entrance cor- 

 ridor, where they cannot be seen at all until the approach of 

 evening commands artificial illumination. Moreover, while 

 all the hat-racks and the poker-work and the American de- 

 signs for Chinese rugs are carefully paraded in the catalogue, 

 it makes no mention whatever of these valuable designs in the 

 corridor. The Architectural League's Hanging Committee and 

 Catalogue Committee seem to have united to declare what has 

 often been said by outsiders — that almost every one in America 

 knows the value of landscape and garden art better than the 

 architects, who ought to be the foremost celebrators of its 

 importance. Certainly the League cannot complain if the 

 practitioners of this art refuse to contribute again to its exhibi- 

 tions. 



The most interesting thing in the whole exhibition, to the 

 general public, and the most instructive, were it properly 

 displayed, would be Mr. Olmsted's scheme for the per- 

 manent disposition of the quondam Fair Grounds at Jack- 

 son Park, in Chicago. It is a masterly piece of work in con- 

 ception and in execution. The good sense, the imaginative 

 force and the artistic skill shown in remodeling the features of 

 land and water and the architectural elements bequeathed by 

 the Fair, and forming them into a coherent, varied and beau- 

 tiful lake-side pleasure-ground, are as great as those that were 

 shovvn by the original transformation of a desert swamp into a 

 sumptuous place of palaces. This design will soon be repro- 

 duced in the pages of Garden and Forest. 



Among the other designs by Mr. Olmsted and his associates 

 which have been relegated to the corridor's outer darkness are 

 those for the grounds of Biltmore, Mr. Vanderbilt's place in 

 North Carolina ; for Auldwood, Mr. Hoagland's place at Sea- 

 bright, on the sandy New Jersey coast ; for Bleak House, Mr. 

 Winans' place on the rocky shores of Newport; for Mr. D. 

 Willis James' inland place in New Jersey ; for the grounds 

 surrounding the mansion which Mr. Hunt built for Mr. Ogden 

 Goelet in the heart of Newport ; for the grounds of Washing- 

 ton University, at St. Louis ; for Seneca Park, in Rochester, 

 and for South Park, in Buffalo. These form a remarkable 

 series of varied works, showing many types of garden and 

 park design from the almost strictly formal treatment appro- 

 priate on a small Newport place, where the house is an adapta- 

 tion of a stately French chateau, to the markedly naturalistic 

 treatment befitting a site like that of the Rochester Park, where 

 water plays almost as prominent a part as land in the general 

 effect. Had they been displayed as they should have been, 

 conspicuously, in some position of especial honor, the League 

 would have shown that it understood the meaning of art in the 

 noble sense of the word, and realized the intimate relationship 

 between gardening art and architectural art, and the public 

 would have been interested and instructed as we cannot hope 

 will now prove to be the case. 



When the architectural designs in the galleries are studied the 

 action of the two committees seems all the more inexplicable ; 

 for they reveal among our architects a growing sense of the 

 need for gardening art in connection with all buildings which 

 do not stand upon crowded city streets. Chief in impor- 

 tance, perhaps, is the elaborate design of Messrs. Carrere and 

 Hastings for a large country house set at the end of a long 

 narrow, rocky point projecting into Long Island Sound, and 

 approached through a natural forest with which it has 

 been united by formal gardening arrangements, conceived 

 on a larger scale than has often been seen in this western 

 world. This scheme, I hope, may soon be reproduced in these 



