November 8, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



461 



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, NOVEMBER 8, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles : — Humphrey Marshall 



Photography at the World's Fair 



The Work ot American Experiment Stations Professor E. IV. Hit^ard. 



The Queen's Cottage, Kevv. (With fi.e;ure.) W. Watson. 



The Generic Name of the Silver-bell lYees Professor N. L. Britton. 



New or Little-known Plants : — A New Water-lily J. N. Gerard. 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 



Cultural Department: — Raspberries and Blackberries Fred W. Card. 



Trees for Late Autumn Foliage J. G. Jack. 



Dendrobium Phalsenopsis Schroederianum h. O. Orpet. 



Notes trom the Harvard Botanic Garden M. Barker. 



The Kitchen-garden E. O. O. 



Correspondence : — Japanese Trees in Rhode Island E. W. Davis. 



Autumn in a West Virginia Garden Danske Dandridge. 



Exhibitions : — Chrysanthemums at Short Hills, New Jersey G. 



Notes 



Illustration : — The Queen's Cottage, Kew, Fig. 68.. . 



463 

 463 

 463 

 464 

 464 

 466 

 467 

 467 



469 

 470 

 465 



Humphrey Marshall 



HUMPHREY MARSHALL was the son of a Pennsyl- 

 vania farmer who emigrated from Derbyshire, in 

 England, in the year 1697, and three years later married the 

 daughter of another English emigrant, James Hunt, a com- 

 panion of William Penn. He was born in West Bradford, 

 in the county of Chester, in October, 1722, the eighth of 

 nine children. After leaving school at the age of twelve 

 years Humphrey Marshall worked on his father's farm un- 

 til he was sent to learn the trade of a stone-mason. He 

 appears to have inherited a large part of the paternal farm, 

 which he managed before his father's death, in 1767, and 

 upon which he continued to live until 1774. when he re- 

 moved to a tract of land which he had purchased near the 

 Bradford Meeting-house, in Chester County, and upon 

 which he built, with his own hands, a substantial stone- 

 house, in which he continued to live until his death in 1801. 

 His life was that of an honest, hard-working, successful 

 farmer, and he would long ago have sunk into the oblivion 

 in which his friends and neighbors have fallen if he had 

 not been blessed with a love for nature and the ability to 

 make this gift useful to the world. 



One of Humphrey Marshall's relatives was John Bartram, 

 an excellent botanist, an intrepid and tireless explorer 

 and an energetic collector of plants. Bartram was the prin- 

 cipal American botanist of his day and the friend and cor- 

 respondent of many of the first botanists of Europe. Near 

 Philadelphia he planted the first botanical garden estab- 

 lished in the New World, which, thanks to the zeal of an- 

 other Philadelphia botanist, Mr. Thomas Meehan, still 

 bears witness to the success of his labors. It is probable, 

 as Dr. Darlington, another Pennsylvania botanist, has sug- 

 gested in his interesting Memorials of Bartram and Marshall, 

 that the latter's taste for horticulture and botany was 

 awakened and promoted by a familiar intercourse with 

 John Bartram and by constant visits to his garden. 



Before Marshall left his father's farm he commenced to 

 collect and plant the trees and shrubs of the neighboring 

 country; and when he finally established himself near 

 Bradford Meeting-house, he planted an arboretum which 

 he enriched with plants gathered during journeys of con- 



siderable length in different parts of the country, under- 

 taken for this purpose and prosecuted with no small danger 

 and hardship. His principal occupalion for many years 

 appears to have been collecting seeds and plants which, 

 following the example of his cousin Bartram, he sent to 

 European botanists, with whom he kept up an active cor- 

 respondence, and by whom he was greatly respected and 

 esteemed. His own arboretum was planned and com- 

 menced in 1773 and twenty years later he began to pre- 

 pare an account of the forest-trees and shrubs of this coun- 

 try. This was published in 1785, under the title of the 

 Arbustiim Americanum, the American Grove, or an Alpha- 

 betical Catalogue of Forest Trees and Shrubs, natives of the 

 American L'nited States, arranged according to the Linnasan 

 system, forming a duodecimo volume of nearly two hun- 

 dred pages, and believed to be the first work ever published 

 by an American on any branch of botany. Considering 

 the period in which it was written, the scanty outfit and 

 imperfect education of the author, it is a remarkable work, 

 full of common sense, the record of careful observations and 

 the evidence of much acumen and good judgment. It es- 

 tablished the author's reputation among his contemporaries 

 and has preserved his memory among the students of the 

 literature of American trees. 



Marshallton long ago replaced Bradford Meeting-house 

 on the map of Pennsylvania, and in the midst of that peace- 

 ful and pleasant village the house built by H^umphrey Mar- 

 shall still testifies to his skill as a stone-mason and the 

 solidity of his work. It is still embowered by trees planted 

 by the hands of the father of American dendrology. On 

 the acre or two of ground which surrounds the house there 

 may be seen one of the largest and most perfect specimens 

 ofQuercus heterophylla that are known to exist ; it was raised 

 from an acorn brought by Marshall from the original tree 

 of this species or hybrid discovered by John Bartram in the 

 neighborhood of his garden on the Schuylkill. Here, too, 

 is a Cucumber-tree, Magnolia acuminata, with a remarka- 

 bly thick trunk and unusually stout branches, and, alto- 

 gether, one of the noblest specimens of this fine tree that 

 can be seen anywhere. These two trees are probably the 

 most remarkable of those planted by Humphrey Marshall 

 now left standing in his arboretum. There are, however, 

 some large Black Birches left, a tall long-stemmed Celtis of 

 great size, some Yellow Buckeyes, an European Larch, a 

 Rhododendron maximum, which has grown into a tree 

 with a short thick stem, and a very large Ailanthus, which 

 must have been one of the first specimens planted in 

 America, and some venerable Box-trees. These are the 

 principal trees which seem to date from the time of Mar- 

 shall; among them are several others of smallersize which 

 have either sprung up spontaneously or have been planted 

 by Marshall's successors. 



The old house and the grounds about it have recently 

 passed from the Marshall family, which, so far as the direct 

 descendants of the author of the Arbitstum Americanum are 

 concerned, is believed to have become extinct. The house 

 is solidly built and is likely to stand for many a long day, 

 but the trees are, of course, in danger as long as they are 

 controlled by an individual owner, or are subject to a 

 change of ownership. There are already indications of 

 changes about the old place ; and since it has been occu- 

 pied by the present owner some of the trees have been cut. 

 The thick undergrowth of shrubs, many of them planted 

 by Marshall himself, has been cleared away and a general 

 tidying up has been begun. This is perfectly natural, for 

 no one wants to live in the midst of a tangled thicket, even 

 if it is a classical one, but this removal of the protecting 

 influence of shrubs and smaller plants from aljout these 

 venerable trees can do them no good and may cause them 

 injury. Old trees, like old people, do not long survive a 

 change in their surroundings and conditions of life, and the 

 less they are disturbed the better. 



If there is a name which should be remembered with 

 gratitude by the lover of American trees it is that of Hum- 

 l)hrev Marshall ; or if there is anywhere a spot which should 



