312 



Garden and Forest. 



[NUMBER 283. 



therefore, the usefuhiess of his work, there is no question 

 as to his duty in the matter. The cutting down of a tree 

 which is unnecessary or harmful to a view in such a case 

 is precisely equivalent to what a landscape-painter does 

 when he suppresses an actual feature in his picture for the 

 sake of true artistic effect ; or when he substitutes a dif- 

 ferent foreground for that which he finds upon the spot, 

 because it combines more harmoniously with what lies 

 beyond. The amateur in landscape-gardening sees only 

 the individual tree, the master sees the tree in its proper 

 relations to the scene and he preserves or destroys with the 

 most studied consideration. It is not because he loves 

 nature less, but because he loves nature with more intelli- 

 gence and is preparing a picture to give keener delight to 

 intelligent observers for all future time. 



There is no need to protest here that we are not com- 

 mending reckless tree-cutting. We have never heard such 

 cutting advocated anywhere, nor do we believe that 

 cautious and conservative counsel to use the axe is 

 ever likely to be "subtly harmful to public senti- 

 ment." We do believe, however, that the sentimental 

 objections which are often put forward against felling 

 trees are altogether vicious in principle and destruc- 

 tive in practice. The notion that a true lover of nature is 

 one who lets nature alone, is the feeblest of fallacies. The 

 very moment a man builds a house he interferes with na- 

 ture ; he comes in conflict with her tremendous forces ; he 

 cannot relax his vigor for a day or he will be overgrown. 

 If it is not a tree to be removed, it is a shrub ; if not a 

 shrub, it is a weed ; and these must be moved not once, but 

 again and again, if a man would maintain his mastery. It 

 is not a question of sentiment, but of life and death. The 

 neglected park becomes a wilderness, the garden runs to 

 noxious weeds, and the shrubbery is a tangle of briers and 

 bare stems. We are not wholly insensible to the beauty 

 of untamed nature. We have advocated forest-reservations 

 for the value of their wild-wood scenery. But wherever 

 civilized man steps in to clear the land he must have some 

 orderly design. He must encourage growth here by drain- 

 ing and watering, by trenching and feeding.; he must 

 check growth there by a vigorous use of axe and prun- 

 ing-hook. He must do this if he raises crops. He 

 must do the same if he is fashioning a picture about his 

 home. He must control the development of his picture or 

 let his land revert to a wilderness. 



An esteemed correspondent, whose letter will be found 

 in another column, gives a vivid picture of the loss which 

 the people of Minnesota suffer every year from the burn- 

 ing of their forests. Of course, the conditions are different 

 in states where the forest lands are entirely in the hands of 

 private owners, but in many cases the loss is quite as great 

 and all the people suffer as well as the owners of the land. 

 Mr. Ayres calls attention to the suggestion made by Gar- 

 den AND Forest several years ago, that until some thor- 

 oughly comprehensive system ot forest-policy is adopted 

 by the nation the forests on the public lands should be put 

 under the control of the United States army for their pro- 

 tection against fires and trespassers. It would be very 

 difficult, however, to find a constitutional way of giving 

 the army officers authority to permit or forbid the setting 

 of brush-fires on private property. Such authority under 

 our system rests with the state, and state or county officers 

 would be the naturally authorized guardians of the prop- 

 erty of citizens. But just here we are met by the difficulty 

 that local officers would share with the residents of any 

 given region the feeling that somehow the woods are not 

 only common property, but are a sort of a burden and en- 

 cumbrance upon the land and that anybody has a right to 

 cut them or fire them. 



The only remedy for this state of things is the slow 

 growth of public intelligence which comes from education 

 of one sort or another. The reckless burning of the Adi- 

 rondack woods has been checked because the people there 



have begun to realize that it is the woods which bring them 

 a livelihood. Forest-property will be unsafe everywhere 

 until it is generally understood that the burning of the 

 woods impoverishes not the owner only but all his neigh- 

 bors. We cannot help but feel that the education of an in- 

 telligent and thrifty community like that which is found in 

 the state of Minnesota will advance rapidly in this 

 direction for the next few years, and that the state will 

 arouse itself to the suppression of this incendiarism. The 

 time has arrived when it ought to be generally understood 

 that the men who willingly or carelessly set fire to the 

 woods are public enemies, who are quite as destructive of 

 the prosperity of the state as an invading army would be 

 which laid waste its cultivated fields and burned its villages. 



How Foreign Plants came to Europe. 



T N recent numbers of Gartenflora, Professor Kraus writes 

 ■^ instructively with regard to " The Peopling of Europe with 

 Foreign Plants." Up to the middle of our century four dis- 

 tinct and important periods in this work may be distinguished. 



The first dates from the earlier half of the sixteenth century, 

 when German botanists began systematically to take account 

 of all the native plants of their country, the Venetian Govern- 

 ment established a great garden in connection with tlie Uni- 

 versity of Padua, and similar gardens were quickly formed in 

 other parts of Europe with the express purpose of collecting, 

 in a single spot, as many foreign plants as possible. The cat- 

 alogues of these early gardens have remained, for three hun- 

 dred years, the chief source of information with regard to 

 the first introduction of exotics on a large scale. The cata- 

 logue of Gesner, published in 1560, names 1,106 garden- 

 plants, and may be checked by comparison with an accurate 

 account of the plants grown in the most famous of contempo- 

 rary establishments — the medico-botanical garden at Nurem- 

 berg, with which the names of Camararius and Jungermann 

 are associated. The contents of such sixteenth-century gar- 

 dens, says Professor Kraus, may be understood by studying 

 to-day the peasant gardens which lie far from cities, or, still 

 better, the well-tended garden of some old-fashioned rural 

 apothecary. There, in the secluded country, the horticulture 

 of earlier centuries is as characteristically preserved as the 

 fashions in dress of the people. 



Just when garden-plants thus began to be systematically 

 studied, appeared that new material which entitles this to be 

 called the first great period of plant-introduction, Just then 

 oriental bulbous plants were brought to Europe in large quan- 

 tities. A definite date for southern Germany is given in the 

 record of the first bringing of Tulips to Augsburg, in April, 

 1559; and with the Tulips came Hyacinths, Narcissi, Ane- 

 mones, Ranunculuses and more besides. They were brought 

 in chiefly by way of Vienna, but through the agency of Neth- 

 erlands merchants who had settled there, chief among these 

 being Clusius ; and it was in Belgium and Holland that the 

 love for them became most pronounced, rising during the 

 seventeenth century into the rage of the "Tulip-mania," and 

 persisting to-day as a serious, sensible and highly productive 

 commercial tendency. In Germany the garden most fully fur- 

 nished with these new treasures was that of Von Gemmingen, 

 Bishop of Eichstadt, and in Paris that of the famous Jean 

 Robin, which was uncommonly rich in Lilies, Narcissi and 

 Tulips. 



With the opening of the seventeenth century the second 

 great period of plant-introduction began. Jean Robin's name 

 is especially connected with this period — with the introduction 

 of North American (or, as they were universally called at that 

 time, Canadian) plants. The ancient Locust-tree (Robinia 

 pseud-acacia), which still stands in the Jardin des Plantes, and 

 was the first to be grown in Europe, celebrates his name and 

 deeds; and in 1635 his garden furnished material for a mag- 

 nificent work in which forty new American plants were por- 

 trayed and described — all of them now thrice-familiar species 

 to the frequenters of European gardens. These American 

 plants came into Germany, chiefly by way of Basle, where 

 Bauhin possessed their seeds as early as 1622. But they crept 

 very slowly northward. The Wild Grapevine, for instance, 

 known to Robin and Bauhin early in the century, is noted in 

 the University garden at Leipsic only in 1683, and at Witten- 

 berg not until 171 1. 



Meanwhile Dutch colonists had settled in South Africa, and 

 the middle of the seventeenth century marks the opening of 

 the third great period of plant-introduction, when the varied 

 and beautiful flowering products of this region found their 



