522 



Garden and Forest. 



[October 29, 



satisfactory. This is true, too, of another widely dis- 

 tributed western tree, Abies concolor, which is hardy in the 

 east when grown from seed gathered in Colorado, but only 

 precariously hardy when the seed-parents have grown in 

 the milder climate of the California Sierras; and it is doubt- 

 less true of all trees which have a wide north and south 

 distribution or which grow from the sea-level up to high 

 elevations. Magnolia glauca grows from Massachusetts to 

 Florida and Texas ; it is as hardy at the north as at the 

 south, and yet no one can doubt that seedlings of this tree 

 raised from seed gathered in Florida would produce plants 

 which would succumb in Massachusetts during their first 

 winter. 



The study of trees with relation to their distribution and 

 the peculiar conditions with which certain individuals of 

 the species are surrounded is full of possibilities, and 

 promises to greatly increase the material which can be 

 grown in regions of severe climate. Professor Budd has 

 already shown, by means of the useful experiments with 

 Russian and central Asia plants which he has been carry- 

 ing on in Iowa for a number of years, that individuals of 

 many species vary remarkably in their power to adapt them- 

 selves to severe climatic conditions ; and the work which 

 has already been done in this direction can be greatly ex- 

 tended in the case of many of our own southern trees, which 

 can probably be cultivated further north than is now believed 

 possible through the selection of seeds from individuals 

 grown at the extreme northern point of the natural distri- 

 bution of the species. This is true, too, of the trees of 

 Japan and China, where many species range north and 

 south through as many degrees of latitude as separate 

 Massachusetts from Florida. Many of these Asiatic trees, 

 as we know them here in cultivation, fail because they 

 have not always been derived from the best regions so far 

 as climate is concerned. Even European trees, which 

 Americans have usually obtained from England, have not 

 always had a fair trial here, and which, had their seed- 

 parents been selected from regions of colder or drier climate, 

 might possibly have been able to adapt themselves to ours. 

 We may even obtain a Cedar of Lebanon, the ambition of 

 most American tree-planters, which will flourish in the ex- 

 treme northern states, if some one will take the pains to 

 obtain seeds from the right place. The old Cedars of 

 England came originally from the famous grove on Mount 

 Lebanon, which is near the southern limit of the area 

 occupied by the species, and the plants which we have 

 tried in this country, and which have failed with us, were 

 raised from these English trees or from seeds gathered on 

 the Lebanon. But in recent years the range of the species 

 has been extended, and now it is known that this tree 

 forms extensive forests on higher and more northern 

 mountains than the Lebanon, in a region which furnishes 

 trees like the Cilician Fir, which flourishes in New Eng- 

 land better than most Firs. It is evident, therefore, 

 that if we are ever to have a Cedar of Lebanon experiments 

 must be made with seed gathered at the northern limit of 

 its range ; and what is possible of the Cedar of Lebanon is 

 possible, perhaps, of the Cedar of the Himalaya and of a 

 hundred other trees which could be mentioned, and which 

 we consider unsatisfactory here because they have never 

 had the best trial possible with reference to our climate. 



It is by making such experiments as these that arboreta, 

 botanic gardens and our agricultural experiment stations 

 can do practical and useful work. 



Alphonse Karr. 



ALPHONSE KARR, who recently died at Nice in his eighty- 

 third year, was the son of a German musician, but was in 

 heart and soul a child of the Paris where he was born. Not an 

 act of his varied life seems to have shown, and not a line he 

 wrote reveals, the presence of Teutonic blood. There is no 

 need to explain the purely Gallic character of the novels which 

 early made him famous. Even their sentimentality, though 

 it seems alien to the France of to-day, is of the sort which 

 characterized the France, not the Germany, of two generations 



ago. Nothing could speak less of a Teutonic spirit than the 

 fact that he edited the Figaro for a time and established it 

 upon the lines it still follows to-day. Purely Gallic, too, is the 

 quality of his style — graceful, light, brilliant, digressive, shot 

 with that kind of wit which is biting yet never bitter, and, 

 whether sarcasm or sentiment is its theme, never passing the 

 bounds of literary good taste. I cannot discover his mother's 

 name, but she must surely have been a Parisian and he must 

 surely have been her very own. 



Even in his early books signs appear of that love for Nature 

 which led him to adopt horticulture as a profession, when, 

 disgusted with Paris after the revolution of 1848, he established 

 himself at Nice. But it was three years before this date that 

 he published the "Voyage autour de mon jardin," which is 

 likely to outlive any of his other books, and the memoirs 

 which he afterward wrote, under the title of " Livre de bord," 

 relate only to his Parisian experiences. So there are no data 

 from his own pen, except in the numerous articles he con- 

 tributed to garden periodicals, from which an account of his 

 practical horticultural experiences might be gathered. 



However, this does not seem to be a matter of great regret, 

 for the cast of his mind was not scientific, so it is doubtful 

 whether much that is definitely instructive would have marked 

 a chronicle of his later years, and the very best that he could 

 have given us in the way of sentimental, poetic and half- 

 humorous writing about plants is surely embalmed in his 

 charming " Voyage." No one but a Frenchman could have 

 written this book, and no one should read it who cannot appre- 

 ciate the quality of Gallicwitand humor.and see thedifference 

 between their statements and those of sober, common-sense 

 intelligence. But for persons who can grasp his point of 

 view, even if they stand among the ranks of the scientific men 

 or of the narrow, impassioned horticulturists whom he sat- 

 irizes with equal gusto, the "Voyage" is most delightful read- 

 ing. They realize, as one reviewer has already said, that when 

 Karr makes fun at the expense of botanists it is as Moliere 

 made fun of doctors ; and will believe that, as Moliere proba- 

 bly was quick to call in a doctor when he needed him, so Karr 

 really appreciated the debt the world owes to science, and even 

 to scientific terminology, the red rag at which he tilts with 

 most delight. Gay humor infuses every satirical line that he 

 writes; when his words take a serious turn it is to praise the 

 works of God, not to castigate the follies of man. 



His " Voyage Around My Garden " was inspired, he tells us, 

 by envy of a friend who was starting off on a long journey ; 

 and it is cast in the form of letters to this friend, begun when 

 he first realized, looking out on his little domain, how easily 

 and agreeably he could travel there, and prolonged until he 

 works himself into a state of contempt for those who choose 

 to go farther and fare worse. There is neither continuity nor 

 system to these letters, and they touch on a thousand topics 

 suggested by something in the garden, but in no sense really 

 connected therewith. The first describes a magnificent sun- 

 set, the second a battle between spiders on the garden wall, 

 and the next the superiority of a turf-carpet over the products of 

 even oriental looms, while the fourth passes from birds to Marie 

 Antoinette and Danton. Insects and savants, the difference 

 between formal and genuine ownership in the works of 

 Nature, the true meaning of happiness, the folly of liking 

 tobacco (pointed by an acknowledgment of his own love for 

 the " poison "), fables and anecdotes with flowers or lovers of 

 flowers for their heroes, enthusiastic rhapsodies over one 

 favorite plant or another, and jovial tales of the follies of 

 eccentric amateurs — these are but a few of the themes he 

 treats with infalliable delicacy of thought and expression, and 

 with equal charm whether serious sentiment or sarcastic fun- 

 making be his mood. In one chapter he tells us how we live 

 in the midst of death — surrounded by dead vegetable matter, 

 feeding on dead animals, and made comfortable and happy 

 by the hands of long-past generations ; in another he describes 

 how his garden was ravaged by an unwelcome guest with a 

 gun and a frantic dog, and it is hard to say which is 

 the more attractive. One day he follows the course of the 

 seasons by recounting how they change his little garden ; 

 another time he shows how its aspect varies during the course 

 of twenty-four hours. Now he lies on his back in the grass 

 and reports what he sees ; then he turns over on his face and 

 continues the chronicle. A delightful chapter tells how we 

 might have accurate names for all the shades in the long scale 

 of colors if we would only study common flowers and draw 

 our terms from them. Here lie tells of an old-time lover of 

 Pinks who grew them in ivory boxes and fastened them to 

 ebony sticks with rings of silver ; there we have the history of 

 a man who lost hisfortune of 300,000 francs, as well as his peace 

 of mind, all because a friend had seen fit to present him with 



