June 3, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



221 



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. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, iS 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — County Parks 221 



The Pillage of Suburban Gardens 222 



Hemlock for the Tanneries G. E. W. 222 



Foreign Correspondence: — Tulips ■ IV. IVatson. 223 



Plant Notes : — Leucothoe recurva. (With figure.) 224 



Cultural Department :— Notes from Harvard Botanic Garden.. T. D. Hatfield. 224 



Flower Garden Notes J- N. Gerard. 226 



Nyinphasa gigantea G. IV. Oliver. 226 



Rex Begonias William Scott. 226 



Chrysanthemums T. D. H. 217 



Correspondence:— A New Hybrid Canna Carl Purdy. 227 



The Stanford University Grounds Charles Henvard Skinn. 227 



Elasagnus multiflora in'Wisconsin Professor E. S. Goff. 22S 



A Novel Method of Tree-planting Professor Fred IV. Card. 228 



Larch Sack-bearer (Coleophora Laricella) J. D. IV. French. 229 



Why Rhododendrons do not Flower H. H. Huuneivell. 229 



Recent Publications 229 



Notes 230 



Illustration : — Leucothoe recurva, Fig. 33 225 



County Parks. 



MANY of the justifying reasons for the establishment of 

 parks in cities will not apply to the conditions of 

 country life. There is no need in the country of spacious 

 open areas as antitheses to closely built stone blocks ; 

 there is no need to provide spaces for the admission of air 

 and sunshine ; there is no need of providing grass and trees 

 as a refreshment to eyes and minds wearied by the con- 

 stant prospect of rigid and rectangular enclosures. Never- 

 theless, grounds for associated recreation are quite as 

 desirable in the country as in the city, and since the com- 

 mons of our earlier history have gradually passed under 

 private control there is an increasing need of provision for 

 associated recreation which can only be met by devoting 

 certain lands to public use forever. Of course, this is not 

 a novel idea, but it is one which is rarely presented, and 

 we are, therefore, glad to see that in a late bulletin from 

 the Natural History Laboratories of the State University of 

 Iowa the subject is discussed by Professor T. H. Macbride, 

 who sets forth certain reasons why County Parks, as he 

 calls them, should be established, especially in the western 

 states. By a county park he does not mean simply public 

 land like that owned by Government, which can be claimed 

 and plundered by the first comer, nor, indeed, land which 

 can be made use of by the public indiscriminately and with- 

 out restriction, but land devoted specifically to public 

 enjoyment as a holiday-ground for all the people, rich 

 and poor. In most of our older towns and villages there 

 are to be found greens or squares ; annexed to a few of 

 them there are public groves for picnics and other open-air 

 festivities ; but what is particularly meant here is a space 

 belonging to a larger community, like a county or several 

 adjacent townships, which would be sufficiently attractive 

 to invite farmers and others who live within a radius of 

 some miles, and large enough to accommodate several 

 parties at once with their vehicles. Of course, such a 

 place should be well watered and there should be woods 

 for shade, and if it contains some romantic glen or water- 

 fall, or other picturesque feature, it would be so much the 

 better. Professor Macbride argues that such parks are 

 needed at once — in Iowa, at least — and that they would 

 have a genuine educational value both on the scientific and 



ethical side, and would minister directly to the health and 

 happiness of the community. 



In the first place it is urged that the usual experiences of 

 country life are even more weary and monotonous than 

 the conditions of city life. In the farm, and shop, and 

 mine, day after day, season after season, year after year, 

 there the same ceaseless round of toil is repeated, and into 

 it no idea of recreation or refreshment ever enters. A sad 

 picture is painted of the effort of the rural population of the 

 west to outwear its labor-saving machinery, but every 

 observer will testify that this remorseless grind is quite as 

 serious an evil in the east, and that unless something is 

 done to brighten life in the rural districts and preserve the 

 mental and physical health of the people, the generations 

 which follow this will see its effects in dwarfed minds and 

 infirm bodies. The farmer and his family come in con- 

 stant contact with nature, it is true, but their days are 

 passed in painful efforts to wrest a living from the land, to 

 struggle against untow r ard conditions of climate and to fight 

 for existence with other forms of life continually. If 

 country people could be lured into a pleasure-ground to 

 spend a day now and then in social mood among the grass 

 and trees and free from care, the practice would, no doubt, 

 have an inestimable recuperative value. 



It is not apparent how such county parks could be made 

 useful to furnish lessons in forestry, as Professor Macbride 

 suggests, but every one will agree with him that a well- 

 kept county park would be a perpetual object-lesson in 

 the best means of preserving and enhancing the essential 

 landscape beauty of any given area, and that this would 

 suggest ways of making home-grounds attractive. That 

 little thought is given to this matter in any part of the 

 country is a matter of common notoriety. This is so 

 unusually true that a farmhouse well adapted to its use, 

 built to harmonize with its surroundings, and with grounds 

 planned and cared for so as to develop all that is naturally 

 attractive in the home-scene is so rare as to excite com- 

 ment at once. 



The third reason for the establishment of county parks — 

 in the west, at least — is most interesting. In the older east- 

 ern states it is a matter of lamentation that nothing except 

 the bolder original features of the country remain to show 

 what its primitive form and beauties were. The native 

 animals are often extinct, many of the plants are on the 

 way to extermination, the primeval woods are gone. In 

 the more newly settled portions of the country there are 

 places which are still occupied by the original flora, and 

 these can now be rescued before they are laid waste. This 

 is a matter of importance, both from the standpoint of 

 science and of intellectual progress, for it is well said that 

 " such is the aggressive energy of our people, such their 

 ambition to use profitably every foot of virgin soil, that 

 unless somewhere public reserves be constituted our so- 

 called civilization will soon have obliterated forever our 

 natural wealth and leave us to the investigation of intro- 

 duced species only or chiefly." No doubt, the organization 

 of county parks would preserve many of these localities 

 as they were, and the very names that are given to some 

 places in Iowa for possible reservations kindle the imagi- 

 nation and suggest scenes of picturesque beauty of cliffs 

 and glens, cool springs and foaming brooks, groves of Pine 

 and wooded hills. There is little doubt that even in the so- 

 called prairie states there are picturesque places in almost 

 every county which would make ideal spots for public rec- 

 reation-grounds. 



How such parks could be cared for is the serious ques- 

 tion. New York, following the example of Massachusetts, 

 has a general law in which places of great natural beauty, 

 as well as of historic interest, can be set apart for public 

 use forever. It would not be difficult to frame laws which 

 would enable a county or a township to hold land for pub- 

 lic use. The life of the early settlers of the country was a 

 long fight against inhospitable conditions, so that Ameri- 

 cans seem to have inherited a tendency to destroy every- 

 thing that is natural. But we apprehend that the employment 



