October ii, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



421 



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, OCTOBER 11, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article : — The Water-front of Public Parks 421 



The Banana Supply of New York M. B. C. 422 



Entomological : — Notes on Blister-beetles Professor John B. Smith. 423 



New or Little-known Plants : — Ligustrum Ibota. (With figure.) 424 



Foreign Correspondence: — Notes from Kew George Nicholson. 424 



Cultural Department: — Autumn-flowering Bulbous Plants y. N. G. 426 



Winter-flowering Plants VV. H. Tapltn. 426 



Orchid Notes E. O. Orpet. 426 



Lawn Notes Wm. Tricker. 427 



To Kill Grubs and Seeds in Greenhouse Soil W.N. Rudd. 427 



Winter Protection of Raspberries and Blackberries M. A. Thayer. 428 



Correspondence : — Lessons of the Drought Lora S. La Mance. 428 



Tuberous Begonias E. T. Bomu'. 428 



The New Forage-plant Professor L. H. Pammel 428 



Proper Work for E.xperiment Stations Professor W. F. Massey. 429 



Thb Columbian Exposition : — Cacti Professor L. H. Bailey. 429 



Notes 430 



Illustration : — A Flowering Branch of Ligustrum Ibota, Fig. 63 425 



The Water-front of Public Parks. 



UNLIKE most other great capitals, New York sits 

 directly on the sea-shore, the foremost maritime city 

 of the world. The city's immediate surroundings are so 

 intersected by navigable water-courses that if we count 

 both shores of the Hudson, the Harlem and East Rivers, 

 together with those of the Sound and the Bay, not 

 to speak of the banks of the Hackensack and lower 

 Passaic, along which w^arehouses will ultimately be built 

 for the landing of goods for the interior by rail, and 

 which never need to go into the city except by sample, 

 there are a hundred miles of coast-line available for 

 commerce. Although the city has been very slow to make 

 the best use of the unique advantages offered by this almost 

 limitless water-front and proximity to the sea, these water 

 privileges have given New York its rank as the commer- 

 cial metropolis of the New World, and furnish an unfail- 

 ing theme for exultation by her orators. Very little, how- 

 ever, is heard from orators, or others, of the value of all 

 this surrounding water as an agent in promoting the 

 healthfulness and cleanliness of the city, and less yet is 

 said of its value as an element of beauty and an essential 

 part of the scenery which insures a pleasing outlook, not 

 only from every part of the shore of Manhattan Island, but 

 from the office-windows of the lofty buildings down-town, 

 as well as from the private dwellings on Brooklyn Heights, 

 Bergen Hill and a hundred other places within half a dozen 

 miles of the City Hall. 



Commerce has the first claim on these hundred miles 

 of water-front, but no one will dispute that some of 

 it should be saved for the pleasure and refreshment 

 of the people. The city has been none too forward 

 in securing land for public recreation, but it has been 

 still more short-sighted in failing to secure water-front- 

 age for this purpose. Of all the beautiful islands which 

 lie within sound of the city's roar, not one has been re- 

 served as a pleasure-ground for the people, although many 

 of them have been covered with barracks for soldiery, 

 prisons for criminals, almshouses for paupers, hospitals for 

 -|he sick and asylums for the insane. In the annexed dis- 



tricts one of the parks, which will be one day devel- 

 oped, comes fairly down to the waters of the Sound, but 

 Pelham Bay is fifteen miles in a direct line from the City 

 Hall. On Manhattan Island, East River Park occupies a 

 small portion of the bluff that fronts Astoria ; the Battery 

 has two thousand feet of sea-wall, and Riverside Drive 

 overlooks the Hudson for a distance of some three miles. 



No city in the w^orld can point to a park more beautiful 

 for situation than Riverside, and although the railroad 

 which runs along its border is a disfigurement, the broad 

 strong river, with the wooded heights beyond, and the 

 magnificent views up and down its course give the work a 

 character for dignity and stateliness which is quite its own. 

 It would hardly be supposed that any citizen of New York 

 could be so lacking in public spirit and civic pride as to be 

 willing to see this park sacrificed for any consideration, 

 and yet it has been proposed more than once by the Dock 

 Department to build piers and sheds in front of Riverside 

 Drive, and, thereby, to destroy the whole place as a 

 pleasure-ground, by substituting for the restful quiet of its 

 scenery the noise and stench and confusion of dock traffic. 

 The propriety of such a desecration might be argued if 

 there were not abundant facilities elsewhere for all the 

 commerce of this port ; but as the growing city is crowd- 

 ing upon every foot of ground devoted to public use, in 

 the same way hungry eyes are fastened upon every inch 

 of water-front which can be had for nothing. The Dock 

 Department has just made an effort to confiscate this water- 

 front, but it was confronted by such a determined oppo- 

 sition by the people whose rights were to be invaded 

 that the plans were temporarily withdrawm. No doubt, 

 another attack will be organized, and another and another, 

 under some plausible pretext, but for the present the 

 Riverside-front is safe. 



The Battery has not been able to repel assaults so suc- 

 cessfully. On the city side a broad strip of its scanty 

 twenty acres is blackened and blasted beyond redemption 

 by the elevated railroad, and even the outlook from the 

 broad promenade along the sea-wall, which is one of the 

 most interesting walks in the world, has been disfigured 

 by the permission of its guardians. One end of it has been 

 disposed of to Government for a Barge Office. At the 

 other end an unsightly building has been built on the 

 park property which not only cuts off the promenade, and 

 just now is interfering wnth the development of the grounds 

 around the aquarium, but obstructs from within the park 

 the view westward across the river. This building has no 

 other use than to furnish sleeping-bunks for the crew of the 

 fire-patrol boat and a lumber-room for some property of the 

 department. It ought to be swept away without an in- 

 stant's delay. When the Park Department began to turn 

 Castle Garden into an aquarium the old dock which had 

 been used there for excursion-steamers and for the fire- 

 patrol boat was condemned. It was to be moved, not 

 only to give a chance for the sea-wall to swing around 

 the aquarium to the north, but it was necessary that the 

 water which was taken for the aquarium should be unvexed 

 by steamer-wheels. Nevertheless, a part of the dock still 

 remains and the fire-patrol boat is still fastened there. Still 

 worse, another dock has been built for these excursion-boats 

 a few rods to the west of the Barge Othce, at the southern 

 point of the Battery, just where the prospect down the bay 

 is the most beautiful. Besides this, two public swimming- 

 baths are set in front of the wall, but since these are very 

 useful and are there but a few weeks in summer, there is 

 less reason to complain of their presence. But, altogether, 

 the portion of the sea-wall which is left with an unob- 

 structed outlook is small, and it will be smaller yet unless 

 the men in control are made to feel the force of public 

 opinion in this matter. There is abundant room for excur- 

 sion-boats and fire-engines elsewhere, and, indeed, there 

 seems no reason why the Dock Department itself should 

 occupy a pier when its business could be equally well done 

 on the shore. This pier which the Dock Department in- 

 habits is the only one on the island where no boat ever 



