594 



Garden and Forest. 



[December io, li 



THE New York Society for Parks and Playgrounds was 

 recently incorporated at Albany. Its President is the 

 Hon. AbramS. Hewitt. Among its Trustees are Dr. Felix Ad- 

 ler, Mr. De Witt J. Seligman and Mr. Andrew H. Green, and 

 among its other incorporators are Bishop Potter and Mr. 

 Erastus Wiman. These names we cite from a much longer 

 list to show that neither sectarian nor political influences 

 will control the new organization, but a pure desire on the 

 part of representative citizens of all kinds to promote the 

 welfare of the poor children of New York. One of the 

 Trustees, in an interview reported in the New York Sun, 

 says that the first object of the Association will be to obtain 

 a greater number of suitable places in our larger parks where 

 children of all ages will be allowed to play and can be pro- 

 vided with inexpensive amusements like heaps of sand and 

 swings. Then vacant lands will be rented for temporary 

 playgrounds in various localities, and an effort will be 

 made to obtain an exemption from taxation for such lands. 

 Below Fourteenth Street, where unimproved lots can hardly 

 be found, play-houses will be established to take, as far as 

 possible, the place of open grounds. The city authorities 

 will be influenced to provide without delay the small parks 

 in thickly populated districts which were authorized by 

 the act of 1887 while Mr. Hewitt was Mayor ; and arrange- 

 ments will be made for sending bodies of children to the 

 parks in summer under proper control and guidance, so 

 that their diversions may be healthful and safe. To secure 

 competent superintendence for the different play-grounds 

 will, of course, be one of the most difficult tasks of the So- 

 ciety ; but the aid already promised by Mr. D. J. H. Ward, 

 the instructor of Dr. Adler's well known school, and by 

 such experienced teachers as Professor Woodhull, promises 

 well for success in this direction. The good which this 

 Society may do is incalculable, and it is to be hoped that it 

 will have generous support. Much more will be secured 

 than the temporary amusement and the physical improve- 

 ment of poor children. Such influences as will be brought 

 to bear upon them ought to have a far-reaching effect upon 

 the development of their characters and their intelligence, 

 and these proposed playgrounds, and the devoted teachers 

 who will superintend them, may rescue many little ones 

 from lives of degeneracy and crime. 



There is little fear that the united judgment of the or- 

 ganizers of this movement will countenance any project 

 which may be objectionable. Afew zealous friends of the 

 children seem to forget that there are larger people who 

 have equal need of playgrounds, and they are urging some 

 very destructive changes in the design of Central Park. It 

 will not be necessary to sacrifice the beauty of the park, 

 which means its highest usefulness, to make provision for 

 the children. Park ground is a necessity as well as play- 

 ground, and the growing city must have more of both. 



Private Grounds and Enclosures in Cities and 

 Towns. — I. 



THERE is a strong contrast between American and Euro- 

 pean ideas as to the character and function of private 

 grounds, be the area surrounding a house large or small. In 

 Europe the idea is that of seclusion ; in the United States it is 

 rather one of inclusion. In Europe the space surrounding the 

 dwelling is treated as an out-door extension of the dwelling 

 itself ; a high wall encloses it, and so sacred is its privacy that 

 the gaze ot a stranger into its precincts is held as something 

 to be guarded against almost as rigorously as actual trespass. 

 Not only is this the case with country or suburban grounds, 

 but in England, in cases where city houses chance to have an 

 area of a few yards between their fronts and the street, this 

 space is also habitually shut in with a high and solid wall. 



With us, the ground surrounding a dwelling is treated, in 

 effect, as an intermediate territory ; a transition between the 

 freedom of the public way and the privacy of the household. 

 This character has been intensified, rather than diminished, 

 of late years, with the growth of wealth and aesthetic culture 

 in our country. In our suburbs the tendency is toward the 

 removal of all barriers, not only between the house-grounds 

 and the street, but also the elimination of all boundary marks 



between the grounds of adjacent dwellings, giving the houses 

 of a neighborhood the appearance of standing in a space com- 

 mon to them all. 



It would be an interesting task to trace the reason for this 

 radical departure from the domestic traditions of our race in 

 the Old World, but it might require a research in the province 

 of sociology so extensive as to forbid present consideration. 

 Our democracy undoubtedly has something to do with it. 

 While possibly a minor motive may be the indulgence of a 

 love of display, harmless in such a manifestation, this charac- 

 teristic seems more likely to proceed from an intuitive recog- 

 nition of the fundamental factof ademocraticcommonwealth : 

 That the individual is a portion of the public, to which he owes 

 the duty of sharing, so far as he may, the enjoyment of the 

 things of beauty that he may be privileged to possess. 



There are desirable elements in both systems, and it would 

 be an excellent thing could the best features of each be com- 

 bined. The American custom contributes largely to the 

 adornment of the town or city; the placing of dwellings in such 

 relations to each other and to the public creates an atmosphere 

 of frankness, of hospitality, and of neighborhood friendliness 

 and freedom. It also cultivates the virtue of voluntary respect 

 for private rights and privileges, and it is notable that in com- 

 munities where this absence of bounds and barriers prevails, 

 the abstention from trespass is, at least, as marked as where 

 walls, hedges and fences forbid passage. Exclusiveness is a 

 habit not native to Americans, and in our out-door life there 

 is little disposition to avoid the public gaze. Upon our pri- 

 vate grounds it is customary to play at tennis, croquet and 

 other games with entire indifference to lookers-on from the 

 adjacent highway. 



Yet there is a great charm in a " close " ; in an open place 

 securely walled or hedged about, where members of the 

 household may enjoy the open air in the same seclusion that 

 exists within the walls of the dwelling. An advantage of 

 such a feature, besides its retired character, consists in the 

 possibility of its use at times and seasons when resort to the 

 more open grounds might be inconvenient or uncomfortable. 

 There is more likelihood of shelter from winds that in an ex- 

 posed situation would be unpleasant at times ; and this shelter 

 would enable its use on pleasant days both earlier in the spring 

 and later in the autumn than would be practicable otherwise. 

 It is true that the broad piazzas peculiar to the better class of 

 rural dwellings in this country largely answer to purposes of 

 this nature, yet in certain respects they do not fully serve as 

 substitutes lor the "close." 



The treatment of this feature should, of course, be quite 

 different from that of open grounds; its service as an out-door 

 portion of the dwelling should be markedly recognized in a 

 more formal treatment, possibly combining the garden, the 

 bower, and a suggestion of the conservatory, with the free use 

 of tender and tropical plants in ornamental pots. Some 

 sheltered angle beside or behind the house should be chosen, 

 with careful reference to prevailing winds and to the sun, and 

 the enclosing wall could easily be made a pleasing feature of 

 the architecture of the house. 

 Boston. Sylvester Baxter. 



The Autumn Flora of the Lake Michigan Pine 

 Barrens. — I. 



T T is the good fortune of botanists and admirers of our na- 

 *■ tive plants who live at Chicago to have within a short dis- 

 tance of the city a region as yet but little disturbed by the 

 hand of man. A ride of a few miles takes one to a Pine-bar- 

 ren and a succession of sand hills and dunes extending around 

 the head of Lake Michigan to Michigan City and beyond. And 

 one can hardly avoid entertaining the hope, even at the ex- 

 pense of the owners of the property, that it will remain in 

 this condition for some time to come. Though factories 

 and dwelling houses have sprung up in the woods and swamps, 

 one can still roam over spots where towns only exist on 

 maps and in the minds of speculators. And since the value 

 of the land to the cultivator is slight, though yielding fair 

 returns to the market-gardener where the sands are not shift- 

 ing, the prospect of speedy settlement is not bright. The 

 scanty timber spared by numerous fires and springing up in 

 their track is mainly composed of Pines and Oaks, with Cedars, 

 Poplars, Birches, Tupelo and Sassafras in localities suited to 

 their growth. The western part of the region is low and gen- 

 erally swampy, the long ridges of sand rising but slightly 

 above alternating sloughs running parallel with them and the 

 shore of the neighboring lake. Eastward the wind has piled the 

 sand into hills, the depressions among them being dry or occu- 

 pied by ponds and swamps. There is much less regularity in 



