July 26, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



311 



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, JULY 26, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles : — Sentimentalism and Tree-felling 311 



Loss by Forest-fires 312 



How Foreign Plants came to Europe Professor Kraus. 312 



Southern California Wild Fruits 5 B. Parish. 313 



Summer in the Pines Mrs. Mary Treat. 314 



New or Little-known Plants : — The Hybrid Multiflora Rose, Dawson. (With 



figures.) 314 



Cultural Department :— Climbing Honeysuckles J. G. Jack. 314 



Plants in Flower J. N. Gerard. 315 



Midsummer in the Garden E. O. Orpet. 316 



The Vegetable Garden T. D. Hat/icld. 317 



Strawberries T. D. H. yj 



Correspondence: — The Annual Forest-fires H. B. Ayres. 318 



The Mountain Maple M. G. V. R. 318 



War upon Caterpillars M. C. R. 318 



The Columbian Exposition : — The Seed Exhibits in the Agricultural Building, 



Professor L. H. Bailey. 319 



Notes • 320 



Illustration : — A plant of the Hybrid Multiflora Rose, Dawson, Fig. 47 316 



The Hybrid Multiflora Rose, Dawson, Fig. 48 317 



Sentimentalism and Tree-felling. 



A WRITER in a late number of the Springfield Repiibli- 

 can finds his sensibilities wounded by the tone of IVIrs. 

 Van Rensselaer's book, entitled, Art Oui-of-doors, and espe- 

 cially by the advice to cut down trees, given in the chapter 

 entitled "A Word for the Axe." It is not our purpose to 

 enter into any defense of the book, which must stand on 

 its own merits, any farther than to say that we know of no 

 work where more sound doctrine on the subjects treated is 

 given in the same space. On several occasions, however. 

 Garden and Forest has advised the cutting down of trees, 

 and a good many of them, in pleasure-grounds and else- 

 where, and have been met with this same protest made by 

 the writer in the Republican that no true lover of nature 

 would think of such sacrilege. Now, we have no inclina- 

 tion to retort upon a critic of this sort that his own love of 

 nature may be conventional and fictitious. We have no 

 doubt that this writer, and many other good people who are 

 distressed whenever they see or hear of the felling of 

 a tree, love nature most sincerely after a sentimental 

 fashion. But we believe that many people, whose practices 

 they condemn, love nature quite as sincerely, and in a 

 much more robust, and certainly more intelligent, way. 



A child who sees a gardener pulling up and throwing 

 away every other plant in a flower-border may feel that the 

 gardener has no love for flowers ; but when he learns a few 

 weeks later that each plant which remains is larger and 

 stronger, and bears many more and more beautiful blos- 

 soms because it has more room, he will understand that 

 the work of destroying some plants gives new life and 

 beauty to many others. The same child might feel pain 

 if he saw a large portion of the half-grown fruit of a Peach- 

 tree plucked off and thrown away, but the reason for this 

 apparent destruction will be plain when he learns later by 

 observation that in actual quantity the fruit that remains 

 is greater than if no thinning had been done ; while 

 the individual peaches are altogether superior in size and 

 form and flavor and color to what they would have been 

 if the limbs had been crowded beyond their capacity. Just 



so the cutting away of a limb, which has in it the same ap- 

 parent element of cruelty, is often an act of tenderness, 

 which will restore to a tree its lost vigor or symme- 

 try. One step farther in the same direction brings us face 

 to face with the simplest problem in tree-cutting. A group 

 of trees have been somewhat compactly planted, and it is 

 plain to the trained eye that the branches of one are begin- 

 ning to interfere with those of others. If this tree is allowed 

 to remain, growth will cease on the sides toward those 

 which it is approaching, and in a similar way the contigu- 

 ous sides of its neighbors will begin to be dwarfed. None 

 of the trees will develop into their best form or full size, 

 for they have not sufificient room, and the plant food fur- 

 nished by the soil will probably be too scanty. The ob- 

 truding tree is' thrifty and vigorous, however, and the act 

 of felling it will be stigmatized as vandalism by people 

 who make a boast of their love of nature. The truth is 

 that it would be an act of vandalism to leave it standing. 

 In a few years the excellence and symmetry of the group 

 would be sacrificed, and the trees would stand as a continual 

 reproach to their owner for suffering their beauty to be 

 marred and their lives shortened. 



This is a point upon which there ought to be no ques- 

 tion. When an intelligent lover of trees sees that one or 

 more are interfering with the beauty and health and strength 

 of others the offenders should at once be sacrificed for the 

 general good ; and yet there is not a park in the United States 

 where a competent superintendent dares to cut down half 

 as many trees as he knows he ought to cut. Cord after 

 cord of wood has been taken out of Central Park this year, 

 — drawn away in the night to escape observation, — 

 and yet ten loads should have been carted out for every 

 one that has been taken. Judicious thinning would 

 have prolonged the lives of trees that will now die young ; 

 it would have saved the beauty of trees w^hich are now 

 unsightly and deformed. If ten wood-choppers, under 

 proper direction, should work every day for a year in Cen- 

 tral Park there would be more foliage and shade in the 

 park during the next year than there would be if not an axe 

 had been lifted against a tree. And yet the park goes on 

 deteriorating in beauty and decreasing in value, when it 

 should be growing into new grace with each succeeding 

 year, simply because ignorant and sentimental people who 

 think they love nature and love trees make an outcry when- 

 ever they hear the sound of an axe in the park planta- 

 tions. 



But there are other things beside the health and lon- 

 gevity of trees to be considered in this matter. Even the 

 tender-hearted might adinit the necessity of such cruel sur- 

 gery if the loss of a limb would save the life of a tree ; but 

 when it comes to cutting away a tree, especially if it is 

 large and vigorous, because it mars the landscape, this is 

 denounced as the crime which no one would commit who 

 approaches nature with due reverence and humility. In a 

 neighboring city there stood an old orchard on land which 

 had been taken for park purposes. In order to carry out 

 the general scheme, the designer felt compelled to remove 

 the trees, and at once there were public meetings and pro- 

 tests against such Philistinism. Now, there is no doubt 

 that a spreading Apple-tree is a beautiful object and that 

 its sheltering, home-like expression is very pleasing. We 

 have full sympathy, too, with the feelings of the people 

 who were brought up near this old orchard and who had 

 played as children under these trees. No doubt it seemed 

 to them like desecration to see these trees destroyed, 

 around which so many recollections clustered. But this 

 was a park for the whole city. Its designer was preparing 

 it for future generations, and with the prophetic eye of 

 taste he saw how much more beautiful and valuable the 

 whole park scheme would be in fifty years if the ground 

 were modeled and plantations made according to a well- 

 studied plan than it would be if the dying Apple-trees had 

 been allowed to remain. 



If a master who designs a work of landscape-art finds a 

 tree in a position to mar the beauty of his picture, and, 



