August 13, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



389 



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, AUGUST 13, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles :— Country Roads.— Major Powell's Destructive Theories.. 389 



White Park, Concord, New Hampshire (With plan.) too 



The Alleghanies o£ Virginia in June. — II Anna M. Vail. 391 



F.ariiness with Unripe Seed Professor J. C. Arthur. 392 



Pi \nt Notes :— Tecoma grandiflora. (With figure ) 392 



The Virginia Creeper Professor E. S. Goff. 392 



Iris Gatcsii W. 394 



Cultural Department :— Notes on American Plants F. H. Horsford. 394 



Rational Pruning of the Raspberry Professor E. S. Goff. 394 



Disa grandiflora • W. <f- 39 6 



A Few Strong-Growing Adiantums. — II W. H. Taplin. 396 



Cattleya Warneri P- Atkins. 397 



Cytisus scoparius Andreanus.— Achillea serrata plena E. O. Orpet. 397 



Dianthus semperfiorens Marguerite G. 397 



The Forest :— The Sihl wald— III Gifford Pinchot. 397 



Correspondence:— The Evils of Grafting F. IV Burbidge. 398 



Periodical Literature 399 



Notes 4°° 



Illustrations :— Tecoma grandiflora, Fig. 50 393 



General Plan of White Park, Concord, New Hampshire 395 



Country Roads. 



THIS is the season when country roads make one of 

 the staple subjects of complaint by the persons who 

 have fled from the stifling heats of the city. These vis- 

 itors, on recreation bent, find few inviting foot-paths when 

 they wish to walk, and after returning from their first at- 

 tempt to drive they usually write a letter to some news- 

 paper complaining that the roads are stony or shadeless 

 or dusty or muddy. It would seem that rural neighbor- 

 hoods which lack the spirit or enterprise to keep good 

 roads for their own comfort and profit would care little for 

 the displeasure of transient visitors, but really the money 

 brought into many country communities by summer visit- 

 ors forms a considerable item in the sum total of their 

 earnings for the year. Special attractions in the way of 

 beautiful scenery or health-giving springs or pleasant lakes 

 make a capital which often yields a remunerative income, 

 and if all the attractions of perfect roads were realized it 

 might be found that the money used in securing them 

 would prove a most profitable investment by serving as an 

 additional inducement to turn the tide of summer travel in 

 their direction. 



It is easy enough, however, to exhort persons to improve 

 their highways, but it should always be remembered that 

 special training and experience are required for the con- 

 struction of a satisfactory road. Certain it is that a group 

 of farmers who gather once a year to repair the roads can 

 accomplish very little that is effective in this direction, and 

 even when repairs have been made properly, and the road 

 is left for an entire season to take care of itself, it will be as 

 bad as ever when the annual mending-time comes round. 

 Every year it is becoming more generally understood, as 

 we are glad to know, that the roads must be made well in 

 the beginning if they are to be kept well thereafter, and 

 that slight repairs made during the year as they are needed 

 are altogether preferable to the practice of repairing once 

 for all. When roads are once well drained and well con- 

 structed the money which is annually expended upon 

 them under the old system, with no satisfactory result, 

 would amply suffice to keep them in excellent condition if 

 it was entrusted to some competent engineer in charge of 



the entire district. Many of the states have already 

 adopted this township plan, under which all the road 

 repairs are entrusted to a selected officer, and this is a 

 marked improvement upon the old district plan, where the 

 farmers worked out their tax. The necessity, too, of 

 adequate training in this matter is so far recognized that a 

 course of study in road-making forms a part of the cur- 

 riculum of several of our agricultural colleges and some 

 other universities. The invention of road-machines has 

 also p'roved of great advantage in this respect, and although 

 the material used is too often the scrapings of mud and 

 soil from the gutters instead of gravel or pounded stone, 

 nevertheless the roads repaired by machinery are usually 

 much superior to those worked on the old system. Some 

 of the states, too, have passed enactments by which the 

 repairs of the main thoroughfares are provided for by a 

 general tax, while only the cross-roads and by-roads are 

 left to be cared for by the communities through which they 

 pass, and the result of it all is that the roads in the eastern 

 part at least of the United States are materially better in 

 every respect than they have been in former years. 



But even a good- road — that is, a road which furnishes a 

 smooth wheelway — may be an unattractive one, and it is 

 worth while once more to call attention to the treatment 

 of the road borders. Rural improvement societies, which 

 have planted road-sides with shade trees, have done much 

 in various parts of the country to mitigate the heat and 

 dust which make driving unpleasant. Of course, it is not 

 always advisable to plant a formal line of trees along wind- 

 ing roads and through a hilly country, but, as a rule, it will 

 be found that trees however planted are better than none. 

 We know of few instances, however, where systematic 

 efforts have been made to preserve the growth of shrubs 

 and wild flowers which spring up of their own accord. 

 We have in a former number called attention to the work 

 of the gardener of a great estate not far from this city who 

 has thoughtfully planted the seeds of wild flow r ers along 

 the bordering shrubs, which have been allowed to remain 

 and fringe the road-side. Where one can see Blood-root, 

 Bluets and Lupin with Cone Flowers, Painted Cup and 

 Golden Rod and an increasing number of Ferns and Mosses 

 embroidering the ledges of road-side thickets the way can 

 never be uninteresting from early spring till late autumn, 

 and even in winter, where the berries of the Black Alder 

 and the heps of Wild Roses are left to glimmer among the 

 soft tints of the leafless twigs of the shrubbery, the eye 

 finds something to delight in. 



Too often, however, all efforts at improving the wayside 

 are made with the grubbing hoe and brush hook. The 

 tidy farmer does well to cut down the brush along his fences, 

 which otherwise would keep constantly encroaching upon 

 his land, but this practice is not a virtue when it is extended 

 to the fences which border the highway. It is true that in 

 smooth and level countries where the wheelway is bor- 

 dered by a greensward which is connected naturally and 

 under open fences with the grass of the meadows and pas- 

 tures, there is propriety in keeping down all other growth; 

 btit in stony and hilly regions where the bushes are cut 

 away and nothing is left but raw ground and stumps the 

 effect is unsightly. No formal planting can be more beau- 

 tiful than the spontaneous growth of Nature's furnishing 

 where the roads are lined with thickets of Black Haw and 

 Cockspur Thorn, Sumac and Llazel Nut, with the Wild 

 Grape clambering over the stone walls and festoons of Bit- 

 ter Sweet swinging' from the trees overhead, and Clematis 

 and Ground Nut and Moonseed rioting over the shrubbery. 

 No park-planting can excel such masses of foliage, and 

 from the time when the June-berry and Dogwood and 

 Wild Plum blossom in the spring, with Viburnum and 

 Elder, Honeysuckles and Roses following in close succes- 

 sion, until the yellow Witch Hazel blossoms brighten up 

 the border in late autumn, there is no lack of flowering 

 shrubs. All that is needed to produce the most beautiful 

 effects in this line is to allow these wild places to clothe 

 themselves, to restrain the too rampant growth of the 



