February 20, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



87 



one satisfying picture. On the further side of the lane is an 

 open field and a winding pond, whose distant further end is 

 lost in the shadow of a Pine-wood, from out the edge of 

 which a White Birch leans over the water. Larches, too, and 

 small Beeches, grow in the edge of this distant wood, and en- 

 liven the darkness of the Pines in spring and autumn, while 

 here and there above the tops of the trees appear the crests 

 of low hills, a mile or two away beyond the river. 



This strikingly peaceful and lovely scene, so religiously pre- 

 served by its present owner that he can say that only the gales 

 have harmed it since he came into possession more than 

 thirty years ago, impresses the most casual passer-by, and 

 teaches owners of country-seats a lesson of first importance. 

 Here is not one rare tree, not a single vegetable or architec- 

 tural wonder, not one flower-bed or ribbon-border ; only 

 common trees, grass and water, smooth ground and a plain 

 building. The scene is interesting, impressive and lovable, 

 and it is this solely by reason of the simplicity, breadth and 

 harmony of its composition. This is real landscape-archi- 

 tecture of the purest type, in comparison with which all mod- 

 ern arrangements of specimen fancy trees must always ap- 

 pear ineffective as well as inappropriate. 



Sketch-plan o£ the Gore Place. 



The lands about this mansion, once a part of the so-called 

 Beaver Brook Plovvlands, were first owned by the beloved first 

 minister of the colonial church of Watertown, the Reverend 

 George Phillips. After his death, in 1644, certain of the Gar- 

 field family became the owners, and when Mr. Christopher 

 Gore bought "the forty-acre lot," about 1791, he entered upon 

 lands which had been the home of excellent people during a 

 full century and a half. Mr. Gore was sent to England in 1796 

 as one of the Commissioners under Jay's treaty, and one wing 

 of his house having been burned in his absence, he caused 

 the present mansion to be built of brick and made ready for 

 his return in 1804. It is said that he brought with him an Eng- 

 lish landscape-gardener, and certainly the old place bears 

 every mark of the distinctive style of Humphrey Repton, 

 whose book on landscape-gardening was published just 

 before Gore's visit to Europe. The brick house, which is 

 painted white, contains many finely proportioned rooms. Two 

 doorways open upon a long platform on the north front. 

 Between these doors stretches a hall dining-room, with a mar- 

 ble floor, and fire-places at each end. The large bay in the 

 south front contains an oval drawing-room ; on one side of 

 this room is a breakfast- room, and on the other a parlor ; the 

 east wing contains a billiard-room, the west the kitchen and 

 offices. 



The carriage-turn, and the whole north side of the house, is 

 crowded with large trees; many Hemlocks, whose soft boughs 

 sweep the ground at the edge of the drive, several Umbrella 



Magnolias among the Hemlocks, some large Lindens, and 

 many very tall White Pines. Just beyond is the flower- 

 garden, carefully sheltered and quaintly laid out in geometric 

 fashion, with great banks of shrubs at the sides, plenty of 

 smooth grass, and large beds crowded with perennials in rich, 

 old-fashioned array. A small enclosure for deer adjoins the 

 garden; two smooth and open hay-fields are close at hand, 

 and around all this forty-acre home-lot stands a dense belt of 

 forest-trees, shutting out the commonplace world and afford- 

 ing a pleasantly shady walk of something like a mile in lengtli. 

 Mr. Gore lived to be Governor of Massachusetts and United 

 States Senator. One of the later owners of the place, Mr. 

 Theodore Lyman, 2d, made the pond beyond the lane, and 

 built the present approach-road, and both he and the present 

 owner planted many trees ; but every proprietor since Mr. 

 Gore's time has respected the character which was impressed 

 upon the scene in the beginning ; nothing to-day appears 

 incongruous or out of place. If the Governor himself could 

 walk about this country-seat to-morrow he would certainl)- be 

 very proud to own it his. 

 Boston. Charles Eliot. 



Winter in the Pines. 



TN a winter ramble there is much revealed that is hidden or 

 -*• passed by in summer. The leaves have fallen from the 

 deciduous trees, and we see more clearly their shape and size. 

 During my woodland walk to-day I measured a tree and found 

 it to be over nine feet in diameter. Its gnarled branches and 

 scarred trunk told of the centuries that had come and gone 

 since, as an embryo, it first sent out its little plumule to the 

 light. This old monarch is but a common Chestnut {Castanea 

 vulgaris, var. Americana), but its great horizontal branches, 

 each one as large as a fair-sized tree, give it an immense e.x- 

 panse of shade, with a venerable and protecting expression 

 which would be marked even outside of the Pine Barrens, 

 where, it is imagined by people unacquainted with our forests, 

 that only scrub Oaks and scrubbier Pines abound. In the 

 immediate vicinity of this large tree were several Oaks from 

 three to five feet in diameter. And beautiful Hollies, and 

 Laurels and Cedars and Pines, were all around, which, together 

 with the unusual warmth of this January weather, conspired 

 to give the impression of a sub-tropical land. Grape-vines had 

 climbed to the tops of the tallest trees, and not contented with 

 one support, they had reached out and clasped others, bind- 

 ing them together and forming dense bowers beneath. Other 

 woody climbers were also here. The Virginia Creeper and 

 Bittersweet and various species of Smilax were abundant. 



Birds twittered and sang and watched us from evergreen 

 boughs, and woodpeckers and creepers were on the naked 

 trunks and branches, always keeping us in view with the same 

 angle of observation, no matter how often we made them re- 

 volve around the trees, or tried to circumvent them. Not so 

 with the little Chicadee, however ; he was willing to be on 

 quite familiar terms, following us with his merry music, hang- 

 ing and clinging to small twigs just above our heads, with 

 back down, but all the time keeping a sharp, inquisitive watch 

 upon the invaders of his domain. 



Leaving the big trees and the bright moss that carpets the 

 ground beneath them, and the prickly Smilax that hedges them 

 in, we turn toward the more open barrens. Here, amid a 

 goodly forest of trees from one to two feet in diameter, we 

 find many old charcoal beds. The forest must have grown up 

 since the sooty burners left this region. They usually make a 

 clean sweep of the wood over quite an extensive tract, except 

 perhaps a few trees that are left to shade the huts where they 

 live during their forest raids. And this, no doubt, is the reason 

 that we occasionally find small groups of large trees scattered 

 here and there throughout southern New Jersey. 



Probably there is not as much demand for charcoal now as 

 there was fifty years ago. Still large tracts of timber are an- 

 nually Ijurned to supply the demand. But in New Jersey, for 

 some reason, probaljly because the soil is so productive, no 

 arid wastes are left, but yoimg trees immediately spring up in 

 the place of the old, and in a quarter of a century or so there 

 will be quite a respectable forest to hide the former devas- 

 tation. In the old charcoal beds to-day a glad surprise awaits 

 me. The little Draba verna is in full bloom, standing thickly 

 over the blackened spots, where the direct rays of the sim have 

 more powerful effect than on the surrounding light soil, and 

 bring the little plants forward as if in a hot-bed. 



Dr. Gray was inclined to the opinion that this plant was not 

 indigenous to our soil. If not, the seed must have been dis- 

 tributed in these forest fastnesses through the agency of the 

 early charcoal-burners, or possibly birds may have been the 

 agents, as I have often seen our little field sparrow {Spizella 



