July 19, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



303 



blows, and the whole effect of the building shaded by trees, 

 with its cheerful garden, can be admirably viewed from the 

 esplanade as one strolls along. 



The reproduction of an ancient Spanish fort, which 

 represents Florida at the Fair, is appropriately set about 

 with Palms and Agaves and Cacti, giving it a local color and 

 an air of tropical aridity. The exterior windows are mere 

 slits in the rough-hewn wall, but within it opens upon a court, 

 where is a quiet little enclosed garden such as one sees in a 

 Spanish monastery. A similar one is encircled by the walls of 

 the Convent of La Rabida, and there, too, the cloister is a fa- 

 vorite walk for its enthusiastic visitors. The interior of the 

 Florida Building is tapestried with immense dried Palm- 

 branches, which are woven into numerous fantastic forms, 

 curious and often interesting. The Palm-trees themselves, 

 particularly the large ones set without the walls, have not 

 borne transplantation kindly, and many of them seem to be 

 dead. The temperature of Chicago, with its sudden changes, 

 is very hard on Palms and gondoliers and other semi-tropical 

 products. The Venetians go about on one of its chilly east- 

 windy days with unpicturesque overcoats and throats muffled 

 in handkerchiefs, and grumble about a climate which lets its 

 thermometer down forty degrees in a night, while the Palms, 

 if they don't quite give up the ghost, do turn brown and hang 

 in slits, and even the wiry Cactuses have an appearance of de- 

 pression. July will probably brace up some of these southern 

 importations and improve their appearance. 



About the great Horticultural Building the individual exhib- 

 its were in so fragmentary a state that the general effect, which 

 was all that a hasty visitor could get, was far from impressive. 

 There were some fine Rhododendrons exhibited, but the gar- 

 dens in its neighborhood everywhere looked empty and un- 

 ready, greenhouses were in process of construction, and there 

 was a good deal more promise than performance visible. 



The picturesque dwarf trees of Japan interested me greatly. 

 One poor old Cypress, three hundred years old, perished with 

 the winter, but there were some ancient crooked Maples, 

 about a foot high, and a Pine-tree with gnarled branches and 

 massive roots that would have adorned a forest in Lilliput, for 

 they must have been at least eighteen inches tall. Every leaf 

 had been carefully trained on the Maple, and the pine-needles 

 were held imperceptibly in place to produce that fine cushiony 

 effect that is so highly prized. It seemed like looking at some 

 venerable monarch of the forest through the reverse end of 

 an opera-glass, so perfectly did the Lilliputian tree reproduce 

 all the storm-wrought eccentricities of the great one. 



Among other curious objects was the exact model of a Japa- 

 nese garden, quaintly rendered, with little figures crossing its 

 toy bridges or lingering by its tiny lake. Here were the hil- 

 locks, the cascades, the stone lamps, the sheet of water, the 

 smooth stones, the summer-houses hidden in the clumps of 

 trees, the flowering shrubs, the groups of Irises by the water's 

 edge — a complete and fanciful little pleasure-ground within 

 the circumference of a large centre-table. I found in different 

 corners in the Fair these miniature renderings of outdoor 

 scenes very useful in helping to form a mental picture of the 

 regions they represented. There were some of mining re- 

 gions in the buildings of the western states ; others showed a 

 great rancho with all its pastures and stables and fields of 

 Wheat ; and the British had a model of a famous slud-farm in 

 their agricultural exhibit, which gave one an excellent idea of 

 an English farm-house and its surroundings. 



I found more fair-sized trees in Jackson Park than I had ex- 

 pected. There were well-grown Willows in wet nooks, and 

 the Esquimaux seemed quite in the forest in their shady cor- 

 ner on the South Pond. 



What struck me particularly was the blackness of the tree- 

 trunks, so that in some instances I thought they were painted 

 with coal-tar to preserve them from insects, until I discovered 

 the same peculiarity in Lincoln Park, and in the trees in Chi- 

 cago. I finally concluded that it must be a combination of 

 moisture from the lake with the smoke of bituminous coal 

 which gives them this melancholy hue. In the Japanese plan- 

 tation the trunks of many of the rarer trees were carefully 

 wound about with ropes to protect them from the sun, and the 

 ground about their roots waskeptfreed from grass and weeds 

 to stimulate their growth. Everywhere the turf, even where 

 freshly laid, is of a vivid green, which gives the grounds a 

 cultivated and finished appearance. The islands, with their 

 commingled tints of verdure and flowers, their irregular shores 

 washed by the rippling lagoon, which seems never quiet, hut 

 always broken by little waves, make a charming variation in 

 the picture, resting the eye after its contemplation of the bril- 

 liant white palaces, and permitting it to alternate the natural 

 with the architectural spectacle often enough to avoid fatigue. 



An imperial vision lingers in the memory, as of a garden of 

 the poets, soft with shadow, shining with sunshine, splendid 

 with domes and arches, and long sweeps of windowed walls 

 and stately columns bounding an enchanted lake. Seated be- 

 neath these trees, with distant ghmpses of white sails behind 

 a whiter colonnade, while shadows of the leaves fleck the 

 path, and rosebuds are bursting their sheaths beside you, 

 the gardens of the Hesperides seem no longer a fable, for their 

 golden fruit lies within your grasp. 



Hingham, Mass. M. C. RobbitlS. 



B' 



Notes on New Species of Mexican Trees. 



• OCCONIA ARBOREA, Watson, discovered in canons and 

 about the base of mountains around Lake Chapala, in the 

 state of Jalisco, is now known to range thence south-east 

 through the states of Michoacan and Mexico to near Cuerna- 

 vaca, in the state of Morelos. It forms a tree of moderate 

 dimensions, with a trunk diameter of one to two feet and a 

 height of twenty to thirty. It is a tree of singular appearance, 

 the thick outer bark being light brown, corky and very deeply 

 furrowed, and the large leaves, which are glaucous under- 

 neath, being found in clusters at the end of the branches. 

 Among the leaves grows the drooping panicle of flowers, suc- 

 ceeded by fruits. These, with the twigs, show a reddish hue. 

 The inner bark is an inch thick on the trunk, and is charged 

 with an orange-red juice. 



Sargentia Greggii, Watson, is distributed over the eastern 

 verge of the plateau from Monterey as far south, at least, as 

 the latitude of San Luis Potosi, and here through a belt 200 

 miles in width from east to west. I have before written of its 

 attractive appearance, when its symmetrical head of dense 

 foliage is covered in June with abundant panicles of whitish 

 flowers. 



Xanthoxylum Pringlei, Watson, is only known to me in 

 mountains of the eastern part of the state of San Luis Potosf. 

 Without doubt, its distribution extends thence northward to 

 Nuevo Leon and southward toward Mount Orizaba. It attains 

 a diameter of one foot, and is tall in habit. The bark is cov- 

 ered scatteringly with stout prickles one-third to half an inch 

 in height from a stout base. Its fruits, borne in terminal 

 corymbs, are covered with glands containing an essential oil 

 which has the odor of camphor. 



Bursera Pringlei, Watson, as far as seen by me, is a small 

 tree on rocky hills of Jalisco. Its foliage bears a close resem- 

 blance to that of the Pepper-tree ; its bark is smooth and red, 

 and scales off in thin sheets. 



Thoninia acuminata, Watson, is a tree of considerable size 

 and of irregular habit, occupying the tropical barrancas, or 

 river cuts, of Jalisco. 



Caesalpinia multiflora, Robinson, found on volcanic hills and 

 mesas of the western part of Michoacan, next to Jalisco, is a 

 tree of so striking appearance and remarkable beauty that the 

 author of the species thought it strange that it should so long 

 have remained unknown. The locality, however, is remote 

 from former lines of travel. It grows to a foot or more in di- 

 ameter, and is covered with smooth reddish brown bark. In 

 May or June, before the leaves are hardly expanded, its head 

 shows a mass of yellow bloom. 



Oreopanax Jaliscana, Watson, is a small tree of the warm 

 lowlands and barrancas of Jalisco. Its large leaves, nearly a 

 foot broad and palmately lobed, with its ample panicles' of 

 white flowers, followed by fruits at first white, and finally black, 

 give it an ornamental appearance. 



Gonzalia glabra, Watson, makes known its presence in 

 mountain canons of the district about Lake Chapala, to one 

 who treads them, by the sweet fragrance of its tiny white 

 flowers, which develop in succession throughout the early 

 winter months. It is a small tree with smootli, dark green 

 foliage. 



Clethra Pringlei, Watson, with its profuse white flowers 

 showing for a month in early summer, is the most beautiful 

 tree seen on the mountain-sides about Tamasopo Cafion, in 

 eastern San Luis Potosf. From this point its range must be 

 chiefly southward along the Sierra Madre of the east. It has a 

 trunk diameter of twelve to eighteen inches and a height of 

 thirty to fifty feet. 



Ehretia Mexicana, Watson, forms a large tree, two to three 

 feet in diameter, and grows scattered over the rich valleys of 

 Michoacan, Guanajuato and Jalisco. Its trunk shows the same 

 fluted appearance as the smaller species of the Rio Grande 

 region. 



Ficus Jaliscana, Watson, by reason of its yellowish bark, its 

 thick and shining heart-shaped leaves and its strange habit of 

 growing on the face or verge of cliffs, sending its branching 



