February 22, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



85 



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, FEBRUARY 22, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — Attacks on City Parks 85 



The Statue of President Arthur 86 



On Broad Top.— III. (With figure.) Miss Mira Lloyd Docfi. 86 



Are the Varieties of Orchard-fruits Running 0\i\.1 .. Professor L. H. Bailey. 87 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan.— VI C. S. S. 88 



Foreign Correspondence: — The New Plants of 1892. — III W. Watson. 89 



Cultural Department :— Snowdrops 5. Amoti. 9° 



Small Greenhouses y. N. Gerard. 9^ 



Romneya Coulteri E. O. Orpet. gS 



Notes of the Harvard Botanic Garden M. Barlcer. 93 



Correspondence : — Fruit-trees Girdled by Mice. (With figure.) 



Roineyn B. Hough. 93 



How to Use Seedsmen's Catalogues Will. W. Tracy. 94 



Chinese Primroses at the Columbian Fair E. J. Hill. 94 



The Forest :— The Forest and the Army J.D. W. Fre?!ch. 95 



Notes 96 



Illustrations : — The Edge of the Barrens, Broad Top, Pennsylvania, Fig. 15 89 



A Girdled Pear-tree restored by grafting, Fig. 16 ! gi 



Attacks on City Parks. 



IT is a popular belief that few cities in the world rival 

 Boston in the reverence with which she regards her tra- 

 ditions as well as her places and monuments of historic inter- 

 est. It has been generally believed that the Common espe- 

 cially is an object of such profound local affection and noble 

 civic pride that it is in no danger from the attempts at inva- 

 sion and confiscation which constantly threaten the public 

 grounds in other cities. It seems, however, that railroad 

 companies and other corporations would be quite willing 

 to possess and occupy as much of this famous ground as 

 they can secure without paying for it, and we observe that 

 some of the Boston papers are criticising the energetic pro- 

 tests which have been made against any desecration of it 

 as mere sentiment. Now, without discussing the merits or 

 demerits of any of the projects to divert the Coirtmon from 

 its present use, it is worth while to say that reasons drawn 

 from sentiment are not necessarily trivial or unworthy 

 of consideration. A large part of the motives which con- 

 trol the best thought and action of the world might easily 

 be stigmatized as sentimental. It is nothing but sentiment 

 ■ which glorifies a piece of bunting and invests it wuth such 

 a sacredness that men are willing to follow it to death. 

 There are certain acres of ground which may not be very 

 attractive in themselves, and which certainly are quite in- 

 ferior in beauty or value to a great many other parts of the 

 earth's surface, and yet which have for each of us a charm 

 which is found nowhere else in the world. This certainly 

 is mere sentiment, but it is a part of our love for home just 

 as devotion to a flag is part of and inseparable from the 

 virtue of patriotism, and there is little doubt that the people 

 who have such a regard for the Boston of history and tra- 

 dition can be more safely trusted with the Boston of to-day 

 and of the future than those who would feel no pang at the 

 spectacle of horse-cars running across the Common or of 

 Faneuil Hall removed to make place for a more modern 

 and fashionable structure. 



New York was settled half a dozen years before the Pil- 

 grims landed at Plymouth, and what was known as "The 

 Flat" in New Amsterdam, and later as "The Fields" in 

 New York, and later still as "The Park " — for it is only in 

 recent years that it has been. styled the City Hall Park — was 

 probably set apart for public use before Boston had a Com- 

 mon. If New York had as much local pride as smaller 

 cities this bit of ground would be invested with quite as 

 much sentiment as Boston Common, for the early history 

 of the two spaces were much the same. "The Fields" 

 were for generations a place for special muster and fes- 

 tivity, for bonfires and ox-roastings in times of rejoicing 

 and thanksgiving, for indignation meetings and the hang- 

 ing in effigy of oppressive officials when the people felt 

 that they had some wrong to redress. Here was the rally- 

 ing-point of the Sons of Liberty in the early days of the 

 Revolution, and here was the camping-ground of the vol- 

 unteers who came trooping to the city in 1861 on their way 

 to the south. It is hardly necessary, however, to make use 

 of appeals of this sort to the men who have determined to 

 cover over another piece of this historic greensward with 

 stone and tear down the only public building possessed by 

 the city, which is at once satisfying as a work of art and 

 venerable with the civic memories of a century. Of the New 

 York of the past these men have no inherited traditions, no 

 family memories. Their past is usually connected with 

 Ireland or other lands across the sea, and although their 

 regard for the city of their adoption maybe genuine and 

 strong, it is not the same kind of love as that which attaches 

 men to the place of their birth. They do not shrink from 

 accepting the control of the city's destiny for the future, or 

 from assuming the burdens and emoluments of ofiticial 

 responsibility, but the local history of New York and the 

 memories that cluster about its antiquities have for them no 

 inspiration. 



There is no necessity, however, for confining our argu- 

 ments to the realm of sentiment, powerful as such consid- 

 erations are, and appealing as they do to the most generous 

 passions and emotions of the human soul. These open 

 spaces in densely populated cities have a value quite inde- 

 pendent of history and tradition. Nor should there be any 

 need of citing Boston Common or our City Hall Park as 

 modern witnesses to racial instincts and customs which go 

 back as characteristics of Teutonic people to the dawn of 

 history. Every intelligent man must recognize the fact 

 that if these breathing-places are to be preserved we must 

 be on the alert to repel every attempt at curtailing them in 

 the slightest degree. The stress and pressure of an ex- 

 panding city are felt upon every foot of unoccupied ground 

 within its limits. The measure of this pressure about the 

 City Hall Park, for exaniple, is seen in the piling up of 

 buildings to such a height that within fifteen years the floor- 

 space in this neighborhood has been more than doubled. 

 In this city St. John's Park is obliterated. A large part of 

 the City Hall Park has already been confiscated. Powerful 

 corporations are making continued assaults upon the Bat- 

 tery. Central Park, so far, has been kept intact only by 

 most determined resistance. The danger becomes most 

 serious when the attacks are made by men of public spirit, 

 who are organized for some purpose which may be worthy 

 in itself, and which, by its apparent present importance to 

 some special interest, blinds its promoters to the broader 

 use and more comprehensive value of park-space to all 

 classes and every interest. Even where public sentiment 

 in favor of preserving these open spaces is strongest there 

 is always the danger that the sober sense of the commu- 

 nity will be prostrated before a sudden gust of enthusiasm 

 for some dazzling enterprise, so that the rights of the peo- 

 ple are sacrificed before they realize what has been lost 

 forever. 



These dangers arc so certain to recur with ever-increasing 

 force as our cities grow that we once proposetl the formation 

 of an Association for Park-protection, which should always 

 be prepared with organized resistance against these assaults. 

 We do not care to enlarge upon this subject here, but if 



