March 25, 1896.J 



Garden and Forest. 



121 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 1896. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — Jolm Bartram 121 



The Niagara Reservation in Danger 12 1 



Bartram's Garden To-day. (With figures.) M. L. Dock. 122 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 124 



Plant Notes 126 



Cultural Department: — Vegetable Notes IV. N. Craig. 127 



Sensitive Oxalids C. IV. O. ,27 



Garden Annuals E. O. Orpet. 128 



Physianthus albens T. D. H. 128 



Correspondence : — Early-flowering Shrubs R. A. 129 



Recent Publications ..*. 129 



Notes.. 130 



Illustrations : — John Bartram's House — east front — Fig. 13 122 



John Bartram's House— west front— Fig. 14 123 



"Bald Cypress, Taxodium distichum, in Bartram's Garden, Fig. 15 125 



John Bartram. 



THE facts relating to the preservation of John Bar- 

 tram's garden, detailed on another page of this issue, 

 stand for an expression of civilization which is pregnant 

 with possibilities. John Bartram was a Pennsylvania 

 farmer, possessed of good understanding, remarkable pow- 

 ers of observation, uprightness of character, courage, a 

 strong will and much industry. His love of plants showed 

 him his field for doing good in the world, and made him a 

 traveler and discoverer at a time when no other American 

 was interested in botany. Through his friendship with 

 Franklin he made the acquaintance of many of the most 

 distinguished men of science in Europe, and his corre- 

 spondence stimulated his activity and increased his useful- 

 ness. For many years in the eighteenth century John 

 Bartram was the principal agent for the interchange of 

 plants between North America and Europe, and to his 

 efforts can be traced the introduction of many American 

 trees into the gardens of Europe, and the planting in this 

 country for the first time of several of the inhabitants of 

 Old World forests. The first garden established in America 

 for the study of plants was made by John Bartram ; and 

 his example led to the formation of the second American 

 botanical garden, that of his cousin, Humphry Marshall, 

 the author of the first book on American trees written by 

 an American and published in America. John Bartram's 

 reputation as a botanist, his admirable character and will- 

 ingness to impart the information he had gathered in his 

 long journeys, and the fame of his garden, made his home 

 by the Schuylkill the Mecca of plant-lovers in America 

 and gave scientific importance to Philadelphia. 



John Bartram's garden, judged by the standard of our 

 day, was a very humble one, and the plants which it 

 contained are now all perfectly familiar to us, but, in his 

 time, they were familiar to no one, and had been gathered 

 slowly and laboriously at the cost of dangers and hard- 

 ships which we cannot now even picture to ourselves. 

 The city, of Philadelphia might have selected within its 

 boundaries some other site which would have been more 

 desirable in location and natural features for a park, but in 

 honoring the memory of John Bartram in this manner it 



has done something which is of far-reaching significance. 

 As a people we preserve and sometimes even attempt to 

 embellish places of historic interest, buildings which are 

 famous on account of the events which have taken place 

 within their walls, and objects which appeal to our patriot- 

 ism — the old State House in Boston, Mount Vernon, the 

 headquarters of Washington at Newburg, the Liberty 

 Bell and battlefields of the War of Secession ; but this is 

 the first time in this country that the memory of a man 

 who served his country by going into the forest and 

 gathering trees and seeds and making them grow, and 

 then sharing his discoveries with others, has been honored 

 with a memorial like this, which will keep Bartram's vir- 

 tues and his services in the minds of men as long as Phila- 

 delphia continues to be a city. 



This Bartram memorial seems to us to mean a great 

 deal, to be full of hopefulness for the future of this country ; 

 to mean that the whole science of rural life and the love of 

 fields and forests is really to be a part of our national life. 

 And, if this is true, it is the evidence that men and women 

 are going to turn to the soil for rest and recreation ; that 

 the love of Nature and of growing things, which the Bar- 

 tram memorial stands for, will gradually so enlarge and 

 broaden us that life in this country will be fuller and better 

 and more beautiful than it has been in the past; that public 

 sentiment, stimulated by the love and knowledge of Nature, 

 will make it possible to preserve our forests from ruin, to 

 maintain urban parks safe from the inroads of greed and 

 ignorance, to prevent the destruction of beautiful scenery, 

 and to make this wide land fruitful and attractive for all 

 time. John Bartram served his country well in his own 

 generation, but his life in the influence it can now be made 

 to exert has a power for usefulness which neither he nor 

 any of his generation could have imagined. 



Last week we spoke of certain dangers which threat- 

 ened the forest reservations in the wild mountain regions 

 of the west, but it would be a mistake to suppose that land 

 which is set apart for public use in the older-settled por- 

 tions of the country is any more safe than it is in Oregon. 

 A plan is now on foot to take the Niagara Reservation 

 out of the control of the Board which has managed it so 

 wisely, and the meaning of this seems to be that certain 

 capitalists are anxious to obtain franchises so that they 

 can speculate on the Falls as a water-power. Even if the 

 people were suffering because this mighty force was 

 running to waste, that would be no reason for giving it 

 away to any private corporation. But, so far as we can 

 see, there is no mechanical or material necessity for 

 destroying- the grandeur and sublimity of the great cata- 

 ract which is recognized as one of the wonders of the 

 world. Its uplifting influence on the minds and imagina- 

 tions of thousands of visitors certainly ought to count for 

 something. A spectacle which enlarges and educates the 

 mind, and opens it to noble thoughts, may be as truly a 

 potent force in a civilized community as the electricity 

 which the plunging river may be made to generate. We 

 apprehend that the enlightened people of the state and of 

 the country would feel the obliteration of Niagara as a 

 distinct and personal loss, even if every ounce of its force 

 were utilized to run some machine to provide for man's 

 material wants. A community which erects immense 

 advertising boards, to shut out or mar some refreshing 

 prospect, and allows objects of great natural beauty t" be 

 desecrated, is plainly on the road to savagery, It certainly 

 is no evidence of thrift or progress in its highest sense 

 that we are willing to sacrifice all the higher emotions of 

 our nature for purely material results. It is not an 

 evidence of civilization that we permit the hanks of our 

 great rivers to be scarred by cuts and Mils in constructing 

 railroads, when they could have been built equally well 

 without such an offensive exhibition. It ought to be a 

 matter of more than loeal concern that the rugged battle- 

 ments of the Palisades are being blasted down for paving 

 blocks and building stones. And yet a member of Con- 



