50 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 258. 



which cover the naked branches in February tell them 

 of the coming- of spring ; in another part of the garden 

 there is a collection of Cherry-trees which produce their 

 pink and white flowers after those of the Apricots have 

 fallen ; at one point where the trees recede from the shores 

 of the lake, leaving a grass-covered recess, are a number 

 of Wistaria-vines trained over low frames in the Japanese 

 fashion ; and in the middle of another little lawn is an Iris- 

 garden, with irregularly shaped sunken beds separated, like 

 those of a Rice-field, by narrow walks. Each of these 

 special features makes the garden interesting at a particu- 

 lar time of the year, while they are so carefully placed 

 that they do not interfere with the artistic feeling which 

 controls it and has made it what it is ; and it is this group- 

 ing of inharmonious units, buildings, and collections of 

 plants in such a way that they do not intrude themselves 

 in the landscape, which is the chief merit of this garden 

 and which makes it so worthy of study. 



The mere lover of plants, as well as the student of the 

 art of gardening, will find much to interest him in Mitsu- 

 kuni's creation, for in this garden he will find some of the 

 finest trees that can be seen in Japan, and among them 

 several which are probably as old as the garden itself; and 

 it is interesting to note that, although as a general rule the 

 Japanese cultivate Chinese rather than Japanese plants iii 

 their gardens, here the plantations are composed almost 

 entirely of Japanese trees ; and that none of the clipped, 

 dwarfed and distorted plants, vi^hich are always a feature in 

 the gardens of the Japanese school, appear here. On the 

 hills above the lake are splendid specimens of the Cam- 

 phor-tree, and of the two familiar Live Oaks of central 

 japan (Quercus cuspidata and Quercus glauca) ; nowhere 

 can be seen nobler plants of the two broad-leaved Hollies 

 of Japan, Ilex latifolia and Ilex Integra ; the common 

 "Japanese Maple, growing here to its largest size, dips its 

 delicate branchlets into the waters of the placid lake, while 

 above it the Momi (Abies tirma), the handsomest of all the 

 Japanese Firs, sends up its straight, massive stems to the 

 height of at least a himdred and fifty feet. Here are 

 thickets of the great arborescent Bamboos, which are still 

 largely planted in all the temperate parts of the empire ; 

 and in this garden is to be seen what experts declare is 

 the finest plant of the so-called square-stemmed Bamboo 

 known. 



The garden is admirably kept, indeed, so well kept, that 

 the keeping seems to be the work of nature, and the inter- 

 ference of man's hand is barely noticeable, except, perhaps, 

 in the too formal trimming of the margin of the lake at 

 those points where the trees do not grow close down to the 

 water. But, except for this single fault, it is not easy to 

 see how this garden, created before Le Notre was born, 

 and when the art of landscape-gardening was unknown in 

 Europe, could be improved, or how a more natural, restful 

 or delightful spot for all seasons of the year could be made 

 in the midst of a great city. 



In the arrangement in this garden of special collections 

 of plants selected for the purpose of pfoducing a display 

 of flowers at different seasons of the year, and so placed that 

 the general landscape-effect of the whole is not interfered 

 with, there is perhaps an idea which can be adopted ad- 

 vantageously in other parts of the world. It is the expres- 

 sion of the love of the Japanese for particular flowers and 

 of the popularity of the flower-festivals held in spring, when 

 -the Apricot-trees and the Cherry-trees bloom ; in summer, 

 when the Wistaria, the Irises and the Morning-glories are 

 in flower, and in the autumn, at the season of the Chrysan- 

 themum and when the leaves of the Maple-trees assume 

 their brilliant coloring. Every public garden in Japan con- 

 tains collections of these plants, at least of the Apricots, the 

 Cherries and the Maples, and they are visited by the great- 

 est number of people when these plants are in flower. 

 Their flowering is the excuse for parties of pleasure, and 

 the intelligence of millions of people has in this way been 



quickened by their interest in the unfolding of the petals of 

 Cherry-trees or Wistarias. 



It is certainly possible to arrange in the parks of any 

 great city special collections of hardy flowering plants in 

 sufficient numbers to make their flowering an object of 

 enough public interest to draw into the parks at these par- 

 ticular times many people who, without some special 

 object, would never go into them at all. As our cities grow 

 large and absorb the surrounding country, many of their in- 

 habitants must pass their lives in ignorance of some of the 

 most beautiful things in nature, without beholding, for ex- 

 ample, the glory of an Apple-tree in flower. In some cor- 

 ner of any one of our large parks, or, better, in different parks 

 in a series orsystem, a number of permanent outdoor flower- 

 shows might be arranged which would add immensely to 

 their value as places of resort, and would have a powerful in- 

 fluence in directing and educating the public taste. There are 

 many trees, for example, with showy and beautiful flowers, 

 which only display their greatest beauty when massed to- 

 gether in considerable numbers, and if the people of our 

 cities had the opportunity to see such collections they 

 would very soon make holidays for the purpose, and 

 flower-festivals before many years would become as much 

 a part of the life of our cities as they have become in Japan. 



A 



The Ginger-beer Plant. 



VERY thorough and interesting study of what is called 

 in England, and in some parts of this country, the 

 Ginger-beer plant, has recently been published by Professor H, 

 Marshall Ward, whose investigations have been prosecuted 

 for several years. The plant is usually found in small lumpy 

 masses, which look like sago or tapioca, and vary in size from 

 as small as a pin-head to as large as a plum. It is these lumps 

 which have been used from an unknown date for pi*oducino- 

 the fermentation in the making of ginger-beer, but the exact 

 nature of the lumps and the way in which they produce the 

 fermentation was unknown, although it had been supposed 

 that they resembled the Kephir-grains, which have been 

 studied by several botanists. 



Professor Ward finds that the masses of the Ginger-beer plant 

 are composed of a mixture of several forms of yeast plants 

 and bacteria, not to mention other fungi which we may call 

 molds. It was his object to discover exactly which of the 

 forms were the active agents in producing the fermentation, 

 and which were unessential, or more properly accidental, con- 

 stituents of the masses. With this object he isolated the 

 different forms by means of cultures, and, after obtaining pure 

 cultures of the different forms, studied their chemical and 

 physiological action individually, and afterward in combina- 

 tion with one another. The subject is a difficult one, and Pro- 

 fessor Ward was forced to contrive a number of rather com- 

 plicated systems of apparatus in his very careful investigation, 

 of which we can only state briefly the result. 



The three principal yeast fungi found in the masses were 

 Mycoderma cerevisise, a common form found especially on 

 the surface of stale beer, Cryptococcus glutinis, a pink form, 

 and a new species to wjiich he gave the name of Saccharomy- 

 ces pyriformis. Of these three forms, the two first named 

 were proved not to be essential to the fermentation. S. pyri- 

 formis, however, must be regarded as the really active yeast 

 of the Ginger-beer plant. It resembles in its ordinary condi- 

 tion the Saccharomyces ellipsoideus of some wine fermenta- 

 tions, but is distinguished by the following characters : It is a 

 bottom yeast which ferments cane sugar; it produces spores 

 in from two to four days at 25 degrees C., and in beer-wort 

 forms at length a film over the surface composed of pear- 

 shaped cells from which the species derives its name. 



A number of forms of bacteria were found in the masses 

 mixed with the yeasts, among them the Bacterium aceti of 

 acetic acid fermentation, but the only specially active bacterium 

 was a new species named Bacterium vermiforme from the 

 gelatinous, worm-like coils which it forms under favorable 

 conditions. The habits and action of this bacterium are very 

 complicated. It is somedmes in the condition of free fila- 

 ments, or short rods and motile, and sometimes the filaments 

 are fixed in gelatinous sheaths. After a long series of experi- 

 ments it was found that the sheath form was only found when 

 the bacterium was growing in media, in which there was no 

 oxygen, and that when it was removed to cultures in which 

 oxygen was present, the filaments escaped from the sheaths 



