February 6, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



61 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted bv Professor C. S. Sargent. 



entered as second-class matter at the post office at new YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



page. 

 F.niTORiAi. AmiCLEs: — The Administration of Public Parks. — The Artistic 

 Aspects of Trees. VI. The Lomljardy Poplar and the Weeping 

 Willow (with illustration). — Destruction of Timber in Indiana and 



Illinois 61 



Japanese Gardening. II Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. 63 



New or Little Known Plants: —Cereus Pringlei (with illustration). ...C. 5. .S. 64 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter ]V. Watson. 65 



Cultural Department: — Leaf Spots of Green-house Plants, 



Professor IV. G. Farlow. 66 



Ferns W. 11. Taplin. 66 



Girdling Grape Vines IVm. C. Strong. 66 



Orchid Notes A. D.,and F. Goldring. 67 



Propagation of Daphne Cneorum F. L. Temple. 68 



Principles of Physiological Botany. VI Professor George Lincoln Goodale. 68 



TheForest:— The Forests of the Rocky Mountains E. T. Ensign. 69 



Recent Publications 70 



Periodical Literature 70 



Correspondence : — The Mistletoe F. R. D. 70 



Poison Ivy E. Lewis Sturtevant, M.D. 70 



"When to Employ the Landscape-Gardener" Charles Eliot. 71 



Recent Plant Portraits 71 



Notes 72 



Illustrations : — Cereus Pringlei on the Island of San Pedro Martin, Fig. 92. . 65 



A Willow Walk 67 



The Administration of Public Parks. 



THERE has, of late years, been a gratifying growth of 

 the sentiment in behalf of public parks in American 

 cities. It is coming to be recognized that a city can hardly 

 possess a more attractive feature than a good system of pub- 

 lic parks, and often, even in cities of the second or third rank 

 in respect to population, the foremost talent in the land- 

 scape-creative art has been secured to make designs for the 

 great public grounds which, in beauty and in adaptation to 

 their various purposes, can be approached by only a few of 

 the most famous parks of Europe. 



When, however, we reflect upon the kind of maintenance 

 our parks receive, the prospect is not cheering. Important 

 works of this kind have been sadly damaged and mutilated, 

 and in some cases almost irretrievably injured, by failure 

 in administration and management. The constant change 

 in our system of municipal governinent is usually respon- 

 sible for this. The lack of permanence in administration 

 is our great bane. Lines of policy are entered upon, and 

 after they are well under way they are abandoned at a 

 great sacrifice, usually for no other reason than that they 

 were instituted by another set of men, to whom their suc- 

 cessors are opposed on grounds that have nothing what- 

 ever to do with the matter in hand. Good housekeeping, 

 either on a municipal or a domestic basis, cannot be expected 

 where there is an unceasing change of servants. The best 

 artist may be engaged to report a project for a public park 

 or system of parks. After a careful study of the situation 

 he submits the plan best calculated to meet the topographical 

 conditions and correspond to the peculiar needs of the 

 population. The plan is accepted, the work is taken in 

 hand, and all goes well for a time, when suddenly the 

 authorities in charge of the work are replaced by other men. 

 This change may come from political motives, it may be 

 due to that spirit of false economy that every now and then 

 pushes forward and aims its blundering blows at precisely 

 the points where they will effect the greatest waste, but a 



revolution of policy is threatened. Possibly the tact 

 and skiU of the artist whose design is imperiled may avert 

 the calamity ; there may be a man or two among the new 

 authorities who recognize that, having given a lifetime to 

 the study of such questions, he is most competent to speak, 

 and they are therefore guided by his judgment, and have 

 the character to influence their associates. But the average 

 local politician is not of this stamp. His ignorance is par- 

 alleled by his conceit, and he deems himself competent to 

 pronounce with positiveness upon any question presented 

 to him. The danger is aggravated by the prevailing ig- 

 norance regarding the purpose of a park. One man has 

 the idea that it must be a centre for all sorts of noisy sports, 

 for festivities of the brass band, fireworks and barbecue 

 order. Another's idea is that of a "pretty" place, a huge 

 flower garden, spangled with gay exotics, striped with 

 ribbon-borders, and beds of brick-colored geraniums utter- 

 ing their chromatic shrieks on every hand. The true con- 

 ception of a park — that of a place where the urban inhabi- 

 tants can, to the fullest extent, obtain the genuine recreation 

 coming from the peaceful enjoyment of an idealized rural 

 landscape, in rest-giving contrast to their wonted existence 

 amidst the city's turmoil — is farthest from their minds, and 

 they will exert all their influence for the incorporation of 

 their favorite discordant features in the scheme. In these 

 ways the purpose of many a nobly conceived public park 

 is threatened with perversion. 



How can these defects best be remedied? Of course the 

 greatest safeguard lies in the appreciation of the work by 

 the public itself, for whose benefit the park is created. 

 Once let the design be fully realized, and the public use of 

 the park in the ways originally contemplated would be so 

 thorough, and the enjoyment of it so complete, that any 

 departure from the true purpose would be met by such an 

 expression of sentiment that the desecration would be prac- 

 tically impossible. But, unfortunately, of all art processes, 

 that of landscape-making is the slowest in its consumma- 

 tion, and it is during its successive creative stages that the 

 danger is most threatening. 



The landscape-gardener has a task more difficult than 

 that of other artists. His imagination must grasp the 

 available materials and estimate their potentialities, and 

 then, taking a bold leap into the future, he must form 

 in his mind a picture of the ultimate scene to be un- 

 folded, and must dispose his materials so as to develop 

 this ideal through slow natural processes. Besides the 

 ultimate picture broadly conceived so as to present the 

 greatest beauty at all hours of the day and every day in 

 the year, he must also form an idea of the progressive 

 aspects of his creation as the years go on, until the result 

 is achieved, which, with proper care, will endure for cen- 

 turies. In other artistic activity, realization follows close 

 upon the heels of conception, but the finished picture of the 

 maker of landscapes will not become an actuality for years ; 

 indeed, a century may pass before the artist's thought at- 

 tains its full expression. 



The work, therefore, of the true landscape-maker, is es- 

 sentially unselfish ; he can hardly hope to witness its com- 

 pletion, and his only delight is that of conception and of 

 watching its growth so far as he may ; the latter activity, 

 akin to parental responsibility, is commingled with pain. 

 Without wide sympathy, a love for the mass of his fellows, 

 a perception of their needs and of how nature can best be 

 brought to respond to them, his task would be a failure. 

 It may be seen, then, that no other form of art-creation de- 

 serves more reverent care, more protection from thought- 

 less or mischievous hands, than that of such a master, 

 whose canvas is the earth, and whose pigments are the 

 objects themselves that the painter aims to counterfeit — 

 the turf, the trees, the grass, the flowers, the rocks, the 

 water, under the changing skies. 



The chief danger comes during the progress of the work. 

 The designer, of course, has in view the attainment of 

 pleasing results as soon as possible, and the gradual 

 heightening of these with the progress of the work as the 



