August 30, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



361 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tkiuune Building, New Yokk. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE TOST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — ^The General Design of the Columbian Exposition 361 



The Memorial to Sir J. B. Lawes ' 363 



White Huckleberries , Professor W. G. Farlo^v. 363 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan.— XX. (With figure.) C. S. S. 363 



Foreign Correspondence : — Notes on Water-lilies W. Watson. 364 



Cultural Department: — Seasonable Notes E. O. Orpet. 367 



Ferns Suitable for House-culture W. Fi. Taplin. 367 



Tigridias F- H- Horsford. 367 



Early-flowering Gladioli G. 368 



Correspondence :— Harvesting and Evaporating Raspberries, 



diaries G. At/dns, Fred. W. Card. 368 



Two Wild Fruits in North Dakota C. B. Waldron. 368 



The White Grub in Lawns Professor John B. Smith. 369 



Zelkova Keald M. 369 



The Columbian Exposition :— Japanese Horticulture at the Fair, 



Professor L. H. Bailey. 369 



Notes 37° 



Illustration :—Carpinus Carpinus, Fig. 5C 365 



The General Design of the Columbian Exposition. 



AT the request of the American Institute of Architects 

 Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted has written a " Report 

 upon the Landscape Architecture of the Columbian Expo- 

 sition." We have not space for the entire paper, but it is 

 so instructive that we feel impelled to present portions of 

 it to our readers, although much of its original value is 

 lost by any condensation. When the oltice of Landscape 

 Architects to the Exposition was created it was assumed, 

 in the absence of specific instruction, that the duties of that 

 office were to reconcile the requirements of the problem 

 which the Directors had before them in respect to buildings 

 and the means of access to them, with the requirements of 

 scenery, and of scenery which would be pleasing not be- 

 cause of the specific beauty of its. detail but because of the 

 subordination and contribution of these details to the 

 effective composition of masses as seen in the perspective. 

 When called to Chicago by the Directory to give counsel 

 in selecting a site, Messrs. Olmsted & Codman were taken 

 to examine the proposed sites. Inasmuch as the country 

 immediately about Chicago is flat and mainly treeless with 

 a tenacious clay soil, and a climate subject to sudden 

 changes and severe winds, the demands upon the energy 

 of vegetation is peculiarly trying, so that the selection of a 

 site was necessarily a choice of difficulties. On this point 

 the report goes on to say: "Of the seven sites to which 

 our attention was called there was not one the scenery of 

 which could recommend it if it had been near lioston. New 

 York or Philadelphia. A brief review of them, however, 

 showed that nothing was to be found on any of the four 

 inland sites that could be weighed against the advantages 

 in respect to scenery of the lake shore. As to the sites on 

 the shore we concluded that, if suitable transportation for 

 goods and passengers could be provided, the northernmost 

 of the three proposed would be the best. It would require 

 less outlay to prepare the grounds and establish means of 

 interior transportation, water-supply and drainage ; the 

 great marine commerce of Chicago would be passing in 

 review- before it at a suitable distance for spectacular effect ; 



an arrangement of buildings simpler and grander than 

 possible elsewhere would be practicable here, and the 

 buildings would have a much better setting and frame of 

 foliage provided by standing woods, fairly vigorous and of 

 sufficient height to serve as a continuous background." 



The proper transportation arrangements, however, could 

 not be made, and therefore the southernmost, or the Jack- 

 son Park, site was taken against much remonstrance. The 

 superiority of an inland site known as Washington Park 

 was thought to be so obvious that a leading member of 

 the National Commission asserted, after an inspection of the 

 two sites, that not one vote in ten could be secured for 

 Jackson Park. After much argument by the landscape- 

 gardeners, in which little was apparently accomplished, the 

 result was, as stated in the report, "that the Commission 

 in the end accepted our advice, not because a majority of 

 its members understood the ground of it, but because they 

 could not be led to believe that we should have given such 

 advice without having, as experts, sound reasons for doing 

 it. The result was, therefore, due to respect for profes- 

 sional judgment. Comparing this experience with some of 

 my earlier professional life I can but think that it manifests 

 an advance in civilization." 



To ordinary observation, Jackson Park was a forbidding 

 place. At different periods sand-bars had been formed in 

 the lake a few hundred feet from the shore and parallel 

 with it. The landward one of these, gradually rising, 

 had at length attained an elevation above the surface of 

 the water, and within this bar a pool or lagoon was 

 formed. Gradually these lagoons had been filled nearly to 

 the brim with drifting sand and had become marshes. Thus 

 nine-tenths of the site — in fact, all of it that had not been 

 artificially made otherwise — consisted of three ridges of 

 beach-sand, with intervening swales occupied by boggy 

 vegetation. Upon the two inner ridges vegetable-mold 

 had gathered,- and scattered groups of Oaks and other trees 

 had sprung up. The largest of these was only some forty 

 feet in height, for their growth had been slow in the bleak 

 situation and water-soaked soil ; they were feeble, and 

 many of them dilapidated through limbs broken by gales. 

 A more serious difficulty was found in the circumstance 

 that the level of the water in the lake, and, therefore, in 

 the marshes, fluctuated not only from day to day as the 

 winds drew it off or backed it up, but its average level 

 varied from year to year, and persons who had studied 

 the matter predicted that in 1893 the elevation of the 

 surface of the lake would be four feet higher than 

 it was at the time when the plan was studied. It will 

 be readily understood how difficult it was to forecast 

 landscape-effects in a region of low shores without know- 

 ing within four feet what the level of the water was to be 

 which was to wash them. In answering the question why 

 the least park-like ground within miles of Chicago had been 

 selected for a park twenty years before, the report states 

 that it is a common thing with town governments, when 

 they find bodies of land which are not favorable to the 

 enterprise of dealers in building-lots, to regard them as 

 natural reservations for pleasure-grounds, and to label 

 them accordingly on their maps. The sites for the Central 

 Park, the Morningside Park, the Riverside Park, Mount 

 Morris Park, Tompkins Square and other public grounds 

 in the city of New York were thus selected, and the same 

 is true of the site of the Back Bay Park in Boston, Batter- 

 sea Park in London, and practically of the Tuilerics gar- 

 den in Paris. Sites having thus been obtained, landscape- 

 gardeners are asked to contrive how pleasure-grounds can 

 be made of them. " In the millennium it may be hoped 

 that expert advice will be asked to select the land with 

 regard to the specific purpose for which it is to be used, 

 and when this is the case the making of the park will be 

 less costly than it is at present." 



More than twenty years ago. when the land and w'aterof 

 Jackson Park was first acquired, INIessrs. Olmsted & Vaux de- 

 vised a plan for making it available as a pleasure-ground, 

 together with the site now known as Washington Park and the 



