26 



Garden arid Forest. 



[NtJMBER 256. 



laws which could be followed in choosing names for gar- 

 den plants. The most conspicuous effort at reform in hor- 

 ticultural nomenclature that we now recall was made by 

 the American Pomological Society. In the first place all 

 coarse and vulgar names for fruits were excluded, and such 

 Strawberries as Big Bob and Legal Tender had to be rechris- 

 tened. As a matter of catalogue convenience long names 

 were abbreviated, and the Duchess d'AngouIeme Pear be- 

 came simply Angouleme, and the King of Tompkins County 

 Apple became Tompkins King, and many useless repeti- 

 tions of " Beurre," " Pippin" and the like were discarded. 

 All adjectives which seemed to assert the superiority of a 

 variety in any particular way were ruled out as undigni- 

 fied and unjust, so that the Shaffer Colossal Raspberry be- 

 came simply the Shaffer, and the Hartford Prolific Grape 

 was henceforth the Hartford. Many changes like these were 

 made in the catalogues of fruits which had been long cul- 

 tivated, and the law was laid down that for new fruits one 

 word, if possible, should be selected as the name ; that this 

 word should be, if practicable, explanatory of some char- 

 acter of the fruit, or of the place of its origin, or the name of 

 its producer. There is not much poetry in these rujes, but 

 there is a ereat deal of hard sense, and it is by no means 

 impossible that equally wise and practical laws might be 

 laid down for the naming of new flowers. There are Chry- 

 santhemum societies in this country and in England where 

 the names of new plants are registered, and it would not 

 be impossible for them to formulate a code of laws to gov- 

 ern the nomenclature of their flowers. The Carnation 

 Society might do the same for that flower, and, after free 

 discussion, any glaring evils in naming flowers would cor- 

 rect themselves under the pressure of public opinion. 



We may add that, in many classes of vegetables, there 

 is a tendency toward improvement in nomenclature. 

 Terra Cotta is the name of a Tomato sent out by Thorburn, 

 of this city, which is at once novel and descriptive of its 

 color. Ignotum is the very happy name of another 

 variety, which was adopted by Professor Bailey because 

 its parentage was never discovered. Peter Henderson & 

 Co. last year gave a prize of $250 for the best name of a 

 Tomato which was described as of large size and great 

 substance, and from the competition it derived the taking 

 and appropriate name of Ponderosa. It might be added, 

 too, that the originators of new fruits and flowers have a 

 strong commercial incentive for selecting names which 

 will captivate buyers. Many a plant has been sold by its 

 name, and good judges believe that Rogers' Hybrid Grapes 

 would have made their way in popular favor much sooner 

 if they had been named at once instead of being num- 

 bered. The Massasoit, the Lindley, the Agawam and the 

 Salem Grape would naturally be talked about, experi- 

 mented with and sold long before ordinary buyers thought 

 of testing them as Rogers No. 3, Rogers No. 9, Rogers 

 No. 15 or Rogers No. 52, 



The Battle-ground in Prospect Park. 



THE scene illustrated on page 31 is interesting his- 

 torically as part of the field where the battle of Long 

 Island was fought, and it is now one of the most peaceful 

 passages in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. The old fort stood 

 on an eminence among the trees to the right of the picture, 

 and the locality is marked by a large bronze tablet suitably 

 inscribed and set in the face of a rock in full view from 

 the drive passing near it. Many visitors are attracted to 

 the spot by revolutionary associations, and derive, let us 

 hope, patriotic inspiration from them. They certainly can 

 find in the place much to appeal to their sense of beauty as 

 well as to their love of country, and those who are interested 

 in landscape-art will find the whole arrangement worthy of 

 careful study. While no strong contrasts are offered, the ever- 

 changing, peaceful beauty of the scene at all hours of the 

 day has made it a favorite spot with thousands of visitors. 

 One can readily perceive how much better is the gently 

 sloping surface of the lawn, slightly concave in the centre. 



to what it would have been if made a dead level, with the hil- 

 locks rising abruptly from the margin, as we too often see them 

 in park formations. Now there is an ever-varying play of 

 light and shadow that arrests the eye and stimulates the 

 imagination. 



This result is largely assisted by the grouping of the 

 trees and large shrubbery. The knoll at the right of the 

 picture is largely planted with evergreens. Nordman's 

 Silver Fir and the lofty Bhotan Pine mingle their contrast- 

 ing graces, while the darkness of the Oriental Spruce and 

 the plumy Hemlocks are relieved by the silvery white 

 trunks and graceful spray of Weeping Birches. Some 

 Austrian Pines are among them, but they are not at their 

 best on Long Island soil and in its changeable atmosphere. 

 Although these trees have been much thinned since plant- 

 ing, they will soon need the further use of the axe to pre- 

 vent crowding. The more distant trees are deciduous in 

 character — Walnuts, Beeches, Oaks and Maples- — while still 

 beyond those in the picture is a screen of evergreens and 

 shrubbery which shuts Flatbush Avenue entirely from the 

 sight of persons in the park. The view-point is under the 

 shadow of a great American Elm, known to all familiar 

 with the park as the " Nellie Tree," and dedicated to the 

 memory of one who was fond of the spot. This is a 

 favorite place for memorial trees, and many have been 

 planted here in memory of different persons and events. 

 The Centennial Oak, for instance, is near here, planted on 

 the one-hundredth anniversary of the battle, and thriving 

 vigorously. The paths that cross the meadow are so well 

 concealed by the slight variation of its surface that they are 

 unseen, and, therefore, they do not break the continuity of 

 the view or lessen the feeling of breadth and expansiveness 

 which it conveys as the greensward flows among the open 

 groups of trees, losing its outlines in the mystery of their 

 shadows. Altogether it is a most instructive example of 

 what can be accomplished with the simplest elements — 

 grass, shrubs and trees — in producing a perennially charm- 

 ing landscape, and it is an object-lesson to the hundreds 

 who daily walk and drive past it. t y ^ ttt ,/• 



Brooklyn, N. Y. John De Wolf. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — I. 



IN one of the most interesting papers* which have been 

 written on the distribution of forests. Professor Asa 

 Gray many years ago drew some comparisons between the 

 forests of eastern North America and those of the Japan- 

 Manchurian region of Asia. Here it was shown that, rich 

 as is eastern America in tree species, Japan, with the 

 regions to the north of it, is, in spite of their compara- 

 tively small area, even richer. Professor Gray's Asiatic 

 region included the four principal Japanese islands, eastern 

 Manchuria and the adjacent borders of China, while the 

 contrasted American region embraced the territory east of 

 the Mississippi River, but excluded the extreme southern 

 point of Florida, inhabited by some sixty tropical trees 

 which belong to the West Indian rather than to the true 

 North American flora. In the Japan-Manchurian region 

 he found 168 trees divided among sixty-six genera, and in 

 eastern America 155 trees in sixty-six genera, the enumera- 

 tion in both cases being confined " to timber-trees, or such 

 as attain in the most favorable localities to a size which 

 gives them a clear title to the arboreous rank." In the 

 Japanese enumeration were included, however, a number 

 of species which are not indigenous to Japan, but which, as 

 we now know, were long ago brought into the empire 

 from China and Corea, like most of the plants cultivated by 

 the Japanese. Early European travelers in Japan, like Thun- 

 berg and Siebold, who were unable to penetrate into the 

 interior, finding these plants in common cultivation, natu- 

 rally believed them to be indigenous, and several Chinese 

 plants were first described from individuals cultivated in Jap- 

 anese gardens. Later writers f on the Japanese flora have 



* Forest Geography and Archseology, Scientific Papers, ii., 204. 

 t See Franchet & Savalier, Enu7n. PI. Jap.: Forbes & Hemsley, Jour. Linn. Soc, 

 xxiii. and seq. 



