D 



22 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 304. 



science rather than to luck or guess-work, and to turn for 

 information and support to men of exact knowledge, instead 

 of relying upon superstition, tradition or prejudice, a new 

 era in the history of agriculture and horticulture will be 

 inaugurated. In spite of some failings and weaknesses, 

 our experiment stations seem to be hastening the time 

 ■when that day shall dawn. 



In the latest numbers of Ab/ce de Plantis Asiaiicis, ex- 

 tracted from the twelfth and thirteenth volumes of the Acts 

 of the St. Petersburg Garden that have reached us. Dr. 

 Batalin describes a number of plants recently discovered 

 in northern China and adjacent regions which promise to 

 be acquisitions to our gardens, and remind us that very 

 important results from a horticultural, as well as from a 

 botanical, point of view may be expected to follow the 

 visit to northern and western China and eastern Mongolia 

 of a well-trained collector with a sufficient knowledge of 

 the Chinese plants now in our gardens to save him the 

 labor and expense of sending home plants already known. 

 Every traveler with botanical tastes who has visited China 

 in recent years has reaped a rich harvest of undescribed 

 plants, and among them have been a number of much hor- 

 ticultural promise. But while many collections of their 

 plants have been made during the last ten years within the 

 borders of the Celestial Empire, very few new Chinese 

 plants have found their way into our gardens. 



How rich a field China is for the enterprising horticul- 

 tural collector the mere mention of a few of Dr. Batalin's 

 new species, mostly gathered by the Russian traveler, 

 Potanin, will show. They include new varieties of the 

 Almond and the Peach ; a new Prunus of the section Ce- 

 rasus ; a new Bird Cherry, distinguished from the Japanese 

 and Saghalin Prunus Ssiori by its biglandular petioles ; a 

 green-flowered Parnassia, first gathered by Przewalski in 

 Kansu ; five new Honeysuckles ; a new Incarvillea ; anew 

 Spiraea or Physocarpus ; two new species of Pyrus ; a sec- 

 ond species of the curious Rodgersia of Japan, for which 

 the name ^Elsculifolia is proposed, on account of the three- 

 lobed leaves, which chiefly distinguish it from the first spe- 

 cies ; a new"Deutzia, and a new representative of Hel wingea, 

 a genus which bears its flowers and fruits on the midribs of 

 the leaves ; a Phytolacca, related to our familiar Poke- 

 weed ; two new species of Pterocar3^a, western Asiatic 

 and Caucasian trees of the Walnut family ; a new Birch, 

 and a new Hazel. 



These are only a part of the plants recently picked up by 

 Russian travelers,with whom, it must be remembered, botany 

 was only an incidental occupation entirely subordinate to 

 the principal objects of their journe)^s. The nature and 

 character of the undescribed plants they have, however, 

 been able to make known, as well as the more important 

 collections of Dr. Henry in central China, and of the Abbe 

 Delavay in Yun-nan, show how much may be ex- 

 pected from a well-tried collector able to devote his en- 

 tire time and energies to collecting plants and seeds in the 

 northern and western provinces of the empire, which are 

 the only parts of the world not yet carefully explored, 

 where new plants which may be expected to prove hardy in 

 our gardens are likely to be found in considerable numbers. 



Composition in Landscape-art. 



THE modern or naturalistic style of landscape-garden- 

 ing may be defined to be the forming of artificial 

 scenes on principles learned from natural ones. The 

 question of extent alone is usually sufficient to render im- 

 practicable the reproduction of a landscape perhaps con- 

 taining miles of forest and plain which, however pleasing 

 in the mass, may be found in detail to have its attractive 

 objects too few and far between ; thus, an acre of woodland 

 with one picturesque clump of Fern is plainly not worth 

 imitation on a private estate, where land has to be treated 

 economically. Yet, although the copying of the natural 



prospect is not feasible, it is there that the principles of our 

 art are based, whether they are applied to the smallest city 

 lot or the largest park, and it is there that we must go for 

 instruction either from its beauties or imperfections. It is 

 there only that the aspects of Nature, whose essence is 

 change, can be studied ; there only can we watch the effect 

 of the shifting lights on wood and meadow, the nameless 

 charm of water at rest or in motion, the mysteries of re- 

 cesses between massed trees fromdifferent points of vision, 

 and the appearance of them all under different skies and 

 seasons. But the selection from these different parts, and 

 their composition into a new and consistent whole, can be 

 learned in an easier school. 



A work of art of any kind is the result of combining cer- 

 tain primary forms into a whole which would be incom- 

 plete with one more or less of them. To a certain extent 

 these forms may be put together by the help of rules, 

 though the point is soon reached where nothing is of any 

 use but the instinctive perception of what is needed, gained 

 by long thought and comparison. Perhaps in none of the 

 arts is this point reached sooner than in landscape-garden- 

 ing, in which circumstances are so various and the mate- 

 rials complete compositions in themselves, so that its un- 

 written laws would seem to require proportionately deeper 

 consideration. But there has been another class of students 

 of Nature's forms and phases, though they combine them 

 differently, and with such different results, that at first the 

 work of the two may seem to have little in common. The 

 artist of the brush usually selects for his subject a scene 

 which, apart from its extent, is most unsuited for reproduc- 

 tion by the artist of the spade and transit, whose work must 

 have its utilitarian aspect as apparent as its aesthetic ; its 

 lawns and plantations must be easily and obviously acces- 

 sible, and must display new beauties from every point of 

 view, not from one only. His trees must be generally 

 sound and shapely, and his roads solid and smooth, and 

 the control of man must be everywhere felt without being 

 obtruded. Such picturesque objects (in the painter's eye) 

 as a road full of ruts or a decaying tree are not merely out 

 of place ; they are incongruous and unbeautiful. Yet, in 

 spite of these and other diversities, the analogy between 

 the two arts is pronounced, and of the highest use to the 

 landscape-gardener who has the results of the work of 

 generations ready for his instruction if he will only bestow 

 patience and consideration on them. 



The man who has painted a good landscape has only 

 done so after years of patient labor and perpetual consid- 

 eration of the proportion and balance of parts of all the ma- 

 terials he works with, and his instinct as to shape, size and 

 position of the various objects he has introduced is so sure 

 that the changing of one of them would probably result in 

 the deterioration of the whole. Each has reasons for its 

 place, size and form, reasons which, may be, would come 

 under no formula, but are, nevertheless, entirely potent. 

 A hand placed over some seemingly unimportant feature 

 will often overbalance the whole and teach more of subor- 

 dination of parts than pages of explanation. Careful study 

 of the foliage tints in half a dozen good pictures will be a 

 better lesson in planting for effect than the conning of all 

 the catalogues of striking novelties ever published ; it 

 would be valuable did it only teach the mistake of plant- 

 ing trees in proximity for the sake of the contrast of their 

 tints — a mistake too common in these days of perpetual 

 new introductions of high-colored and variegated trees and 

 shrubs. All these points, patiently and conscientiously 

 considered, will develop in the outdoor artist the feeling of 

 due proportion of parts in his own composition ; and he 

 will come to have as sure a perception of fitness in their 

 size, form and relative position as the painter, since his 

 work is founded on principles closely related and no less 

 artistic. 



An even more important use of the study of pictures is 

 the light thrown on the placing of individual and conspic- 

 uous objects. In the natural landscape these are not often 

 important; in the painter's they are usually the main fea- 



