64 



Garden and Forest. 



[February 6, 1889. 



these, we gather, are executed on a small scale and not placed 

 where they would disfigure a landscape effect. Low shrubs 

 are generally cut into hemispherical forms, but this is to aid 

 the imagination by representing "rounded masses of varie- 

 gated greens placed upon the hillsides and between the rock- 

 eries. ". . . Such spherical masses are frequently arranged in 

 groups towering one behind another, so as to suggest the 

 forms of green hills." That is to say, the eye then recog- 

 nizes, not an artificially shaped shrub, but a mass of larger size 

 seen at a fictitious distance. 



In the placing of trees, great care and taste are, of course, 

 displayed. Thev should stand near a veranda for the purpose 

 of affording shade, and near bridges so that their shadow may 

 fall upon the surface of the water and produce a pretty effect. 

 Singular and suggestive names are apphed to the trees which 

 hold different positions in a garden, from the principal tree 

 which occupies a foreground spot, and must be a large and 

 fine specimen — usually an Oak or a Pine — to the "distancing 

 tree," which must stand behind the furthest hill of the garden 

 and be rendered indistinct in outline to aid the effect of 

 remoteness. 



Flowering trees are often massed together in large numbers 

 in public gardens ; but in private grounds, where a more del- 

 icate taste may be supposed to rule, they are preferably dis- 

 tributed "in such a way that they shall come between the 

 foliage of evergreens." Flowers are profusely used in most 

 gardens in such a way as to supply an abundance of color at 

 all seasons of the year. But in some kinds or types of gar- 

 dens they are absent or appear only in or near the water. Of 

 course no landscape arrangement is disfigured by formal 

 beds ; but another part of the grounds, usually adjacent to 

 the women's apartments, is often devoted to the flower-gar- 

 den, and here the plants are thickly massed together, though 

 without any attempt at geometrical pattern-making. The 

 growing of flowers in this way is, however, regarded as a 

 rather effeminate taste. 



Many paragraphs in Mr. Conder's article are devoted to the 

 lanterns which so prominently ornament Japanese gardens, 

 and to the nature and arrangement of gateways, fences, wa- 

 ter-basins, bridges and hedges, as well as to the kinds of trees, 

 shrubs and flowers most generally seen. But there is no 

 space here to follow his descriptions. It can only be added 

 that, of course, the arrangement of hills and valleys described 

 in my former article does not universally prevail. The so- 

 called "Common Gardens" have no artificial hills, "but the 

 stones and rounded shrubs are sometimes grouped so as to 

 suggest mountain scenery. . . . Gardens of this type when 

 level may be supposed to represent either a mountain-valley 

 or a sea-beach ; in the former case the surroundings should 

 be steep, thickly planted and imposing ; in the latter case the 

 landscape may be open and placid." Gardens for tea-cere- 

 monies have peculiarities of arrangement proper to them- 

 selves, and there are others in which a stream is the chief 

 feature, and which are arranged so as to bring it to the best 

 effect. Even narrow courts and passages are treated by the 

 landscape gardener, in simple designs consisting of "a con- 

 dnuous row of stepping stones and an occasional group of 

 trees and shrubs." 



And in conclusion I may add that a compensation is found 

 in Japan for that lack, which Mr. Conder notes, of large parks 

 with roads, wide lawns and great plantadons, such as we find 

 in the West. Wherever one goes in Japan, we learn from 

 other writers, the natural landscape has been touched up and 

 assisted to greater beauty by the hand of man. One can never 

 tell where nature ends and artificiality begins, so thoroughly 

 have nature's intentions been respected and so artistically 

 have they been developed. Where a real landscape is thus 

 treated, of course no miniature simulations of scenery are 

 introduced. These are reserved for spots apart from great 

 natural features, although such features may afar off encircle 

 them and blend with their own near beauties. Here they lie, 

 like pictures in a frame, and as such are judged by the 

 Japanese eye — less for what they are, though this may be 

 something very charming, than for what they typify, suggest 

 and stimulate the imaginafion to recall. 



New York. M. G. Van Rejtsselaer. 



"When you come upon a particularly fine prospect, and re- 

 mark upon it, What a pity that great tree is there, how much 

 finer this would be if it could be removed! you might be 

 very much surprised to find, when the tree was cut down, 

 that you no longer had a picture before you ; for the highest 

 type of garden is like a picture gallery and pictures require 

 frames." Puckler-Muskau, 1834. 



New or Little Known Plants. 



Cereus Pringlei. 



ONE of the most interesting of Mr. Pringle's numerous 

 Mexican discoveries is the great Cactus which now 

 bears his name,* and which he found during the summer 

 of 1884 growing upon the hills and mesas south of the 

 Altar River in north-western Sonora. 



The stems of this remarkable plant, which divide irreg- 

 ularly above the base into numerous large branches, do 

 not attain the great height of its near relative, the now 

 well-known Snwarrow, the Cereus giganieus of Arizona and 

 Sonora. They are sometimes, however, more than thirty 

 feet high, and they are thicker and more ponderous than 

 those of any Cactus known. The number of ribs is 

 fewer than in C. giganteus, while the flowers, instead of 

 being clustered about the summit of the stem, as in that 

 species, are scattered along the ribs for a distance of two 

 or three feet from the top. 



Nothing more was seen of this plant until October, 

 1887, when Dr. Edward Palmer, the well-known explorer 

 of Mexican botany, visited San Pedro Martin Island, in 

 the Gulf of California, which he found covered with a 

 forest of these trees, which our illustration upon page 65, 

 taken from a photograph, for which we are indebted to Dr. 

 Palmer, shows to be one of the strangest and most 

 remarkable forests which has yet been seen in any 

 portion of the North American Continent. 



It appears from Dr. Palmer's notes that San Pedro Mar- 

 tin Island, is in the Gulf of California, eighty miles north- 

 west of Guymas, in latitude 39I- and longitude 113 west 

 from. Greenwich. It is an irregularly shaped rock about 

 four and a half miles in circumference, with a central 

 elevation of 1,200 feet above the leA'^el of the gulf. It is 

 partly covered with a deep deposit of guano, which Mexi- 

 cans and Yacqua Indians are now engaged in collecting 

 for export. The Cereus is called Cordon by the Indians, 

 who gather the fruit in great quantities. They take out 

 the pulp and seeds and grind them together into a sort of 

 flour. This is then mixed with water and made into 

 tomales, or cakes, a tablespoonful of the paste being put 

 between two corn husks and boiled. Dr. Palmer found 

 these tomales not inferior to the pies of more civilized 

 people. 



The Cordon furnishes the only fuel and timber produced 

 upon the island, which is destitute of other trees. The 

 dry, liard ribs, the remnants of many forest generations, 

 and practically indestructible except by fire, are found 

 scattered over the surface in large numbers; they are 

 carefully collected by the Indians, who manufacture 

 them into the canes needed by the men in climbing over 

 the precipitous rocks in search of the guano ; they serve 

 for the beams and door-posts of the workmen's huts 

 and supply the fuel for their simple cooking. The largest 

 plant observed by Dr. Palmer was thirty-five feet high, 

 with a circumference at the base of the trunk of seven 

 feet and six inches. 



Dr. Palmer collected only eighteen flowering plants 

 upon the island ; among these Mr. Watson finds a new 

 genus of CompositoB, and a bushy Fig, probably an unde- 

 scribed species. The poverty of the collection is due in 

 part, no doubt, to the late period of the year in which it 

 was made, and when most annual plants would have 

 entirely disappeared. C. S. S. 



'* " Cereus Pringlei, Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Sci., xx. 368. Stems 

 erect; ribs usually thirteen, very rarely more ; areolae contiguous upon the ribs, 

 oblong or lanceolate, the younger densely tomentose and with an outer circle of 

 nearly erect, more or less unequal, ash-colored spines (mostly six to nine lines 

 long) , and a central stouter one twice longer, all terete; the older areolte naked, 

 witn about fifteen dark flattened spines, mostly widely spreading, about an inch 

 long, and deciduous ; flowers lateral and scattered below the summit of the stem, 

 two and one-half inches long; the ovary and tube very densely covered with tawny 

 hairs, nearly or quite concealing the lanceolate scales and outer sepals ; petals 

 spathulate, white, tinged with green or purple, six lines long; fruit globose, two 

 inches long, bearing the persistent flower, and densely covered with globose cush- 

 ions (four or five lines in diameter) of dense tomentum intermixed with more or 

 less numerous white, bristly spines (one-half inch long or less) ; seeds black and 

 shining, obliquely oblong-ovate, one and one-half Tines long ; hilum oblong, 

 basilar." 



