August 19, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



33i 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BV 



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, AUGUST 19, iJ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGH. 



Editorial A rtjcles : — The Preservation of Natural Eeauty 331 



Grape-fruit 33 2 



An April Scene in Central Park. (With figure.) 332 



The Pines in August Mrs. Mary Treat. 332 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter IV. Watson. 333 



Cultural Department :— Water-lilies from Seed W. Tricker. 334 



Notes from the Herbaceous Border Robert Cameron. 336 



Some Novelties.— II E. O. Orpet. 336 



Solanum Wendlandii E. O. O. 337 



Correspondence :— The Compass Plant S. 337 



Rhododendron maximum in Connecticut E. F. Coe. 337 



Church Bouquets Fanny Copley Seavey. 338 



The Forest: — The Burma Teak Forests.— Ill Sir Dietrick Brandts. 338 



Recent Publications 339 



Notes ■ 34° 



Illustration: — View in Central Park, April 7th, 1896, from a photograph 

 taken by Lucien C. Laudy tor the American Museum of Natural 

 History, Fig. 44 335 



The Preservation of Natural Beauty. 



IT is now more than five years since the body known as 

 the Trustees of Public Reservation was incorporated 

 under an act of the Legislature of Massachusetts, for the 

 purpose of preserving tracts of land which were distin- 

 guished for their natural beauty or for their historic asso- 

 ciation. This was the first organization of the kind ever 

 established, so faras we know, and it seemed to us then, as it 

 does yet, a proof of more than ordinary enlightenment and 

 public spirit in the society out of which it grew. We 

 expressed the hope then that this might become a set- 

 tled policy throughout the country, for it certainly is not too 

 much to expect that a community of civilized people would 

 take upon themselves the duty of preserving and transmitting 

 to their children the treasures of beauty which they have 

 inherited, or of protecting from defacement and ruin 

 places made memorable by patriotic sacrifices and noble 

 deeds and preserving them for the inspiration of their de- 

 scendants. New York has enacted a similar law, and 

 steps have been taken for saving some of our revolutionary 

 battle-fields and other noteworthy places from desecration. 

 The movement for saving the Palisades in New Jersey is 

 the outcome of a similar sentiment, and so is the rescue 

 and devotion to public use of that magnificent river gorge 

 known as the Dalles of the St. Croix, between the states of 

 Minnesota and Wisconsin. The acquisition of Niagara by 

 the state of New York and of Valley Forge by Pennsylvania 

 are noteworthy results of the same feeling. 



It was the example of Massachusetts which suggested an 

 article in The Spectator, of London, in which it was sharply 

 pointed out that it was quite as important for a nation to 

 secure sites of great natural beauty as it was to buy fine 

 pictures. And since Snovvdon had already been in the 

 market, and the waterfall of Lodore was advertised for sale, 

 it was urged that a national trust for places of historic in- 

 terest or natural beauty was a necessity. Such a trust was 

 therefore organized, and the trustees were made up of men 

 eminent in letters and in public life. In a recent number 

 of The Spectator, Miss Octavia Hill, who was one of the 

 original incorporators of the trust, writes that the wild 

 heathy promontory known as Barras Head, one of the 



headlands which enclose King Arthur's Cove at Tintagel, 

 could be secured for a comparatively small sum ; and, no 

 doubt, there are enough people interested in the Arthurian 

 legends and the poetry that has gathered about them, to 

 rescue this delightful spot and dedicate it to public use for- 

 ever. In the same letter it is stated that a lovely bit of old 

 English architecture, a clergy-house built before the 

 Reformation, in a Sussex village, had been acquired as an 

 inheritance from the middle ages. It is encouraging to 

 see good work like that in Massachusetts bearing fruit 

 across the sea, and we are sure that men and women of 

 public spirit, who urge a policy of this sort upon the Gen- 

 eral Government and the government of the separate 

 states, will minister to some of the noblest and purest 

 emotions that animate the human soul, while they will 

 accomplish a work which is eminently practical, even 

 from the sordid dollar-and-cent point of view, and add a 

 distinct pecuniary value to all property which surrounds 

 these places. 



The setting apart of the great forest reservations of the 

 west by the General Government is, of course, a different 

 matter. But the establishment of Yellowstone Park and 

 the acquisition of the great battle-fields of the Rebellion are 

 justified only by a sentiment that the places which are 

 remarkable for the sublimity and beauty of their natural 

 features, or which have been consecrated by heroic struggles 

 for principle, are, or ought to be, possessions of the people 

 as a whole. But if the people, speaking through their rep- 

 resentatives, have asserted their rights in such conspicuous 

 instances, they certainly must feel that their unwritten 

 rights are often invaded by private persons and corpora- 

 tions when they find the scenery which they have enjoyed 

 all their lives needlessly defaced. In some cases laws 

 have been enacted to protect them in this matter. In this 

 city the obtrusive ugliness of signs and advertisements 

 within a certain distance from park territory can be miti- 

 gated by the action of the Park Board, but all over the 

 country, landscapes are blotted out by billboards and made 

 hideous by the paint pot of the advertiser, and there is no 

 redress against the outrage. If a private citizen is willing 

 to devote his property to such use he can violate the sensi- 

 bilities of his neighbors and of all who travel on the high- 

 way with impunity. Since there is law against offensive 

 smells and useless noises, there seems to be no injustice in 

 compelling property owners to respect that love for beauty 

 which, to some degree, is implanted in the nature of every 

 one. A loathsome sight is certainly as disagreeable as a 

 foul smell. 



What is needed primarily is not, however, law, but a 

 sensitive public conscience which will impel every citizen 

 to respect the feelings of his neighbors. In a truly enlight- 

 ened community a corporation which was building a rail- 

 road would not needlessly gash and scar the landscape. 

 They would no sooner think of destroying the beauties 

 which are the inheritance of all than they would of reck- 

 lessly destroying property, for which they would be held 

 in pecuniary damages. We can remember a White Oak- 

 tree which had stood beside an old highway in New Jersey 

 for generations. It was a stately tree before the war of 

 the Revolution. It was an essential feature in a beautiful 

 prospect, and it had been admired and reverenced by 

 thousands who traveled on that road until they felt a per- 

 sonal interest and proprietorship in it. One day the owner 

 of the abutting land cut down this tree for apparently no 

 reason whatever, for it did no injury to the land, and the 

 log was left to rot by the wayside, but every one who 

 has passed the stump since that day feels a sense of 

 bereavement. A noteworthy landmark of the country is 

 obliterated. The whole place is distinctly less interesting, 

 and will be forever. 



The sum of the whole matter is that while the estab- 

 lished boards of trustees for acquiring public reservations 

 mark an advance in public sentiment, and while these 

 organizations are already doing a noble work and deserve 

 the fullest sympathy and most substantial aid, what we 



