I lO 



Garden and Forest. 



[March 6, i88g. 



their trunks. After I had come to manhood, and had come to 

 be a sort of authority upon such matters, one day, when in the 

 neighborliood, this question was brought up, and the preva- 

 lent opinion expressed that the trunks of the trees in such a 

 case must needs separate the rails more widely, and carry 

 them all further from the ground. This opinion was shared 

 by some very intelligent men, who had walked past these 

 trees day after day for many years. I proposed that we should 

 examine the fence, then at least twenty years old. We did so. 

 The lower rail throughout remained next the ground ; the 

 upper, apparently, was no higher than the first ; the growing 

 wood had formed itself around the ends of the rails, some- 

 times in remarkable protrusions, forming deep sockets for the 

 rails. 



" As for the analogy of the tree with the man, ' born, say, one 

 foot long, and growing till he is six feet high,' but still keeping 

 the same head at the top — that is just what the tree does not 

 do. Let the large bud at tlie summit of last year's seedling 

 Horse-chestnut tree represent the head, and let Mr. Harrison 

 notice what becomes of it in the spring, when the new growth 

 is made. Or, let him examine a Horse-chestnut tree of five or 

 six years' growth, and notice by the set of rings on the bark, 

 left by the bud scales as they fell, just where the head was each 

 year. He will see that the tree has the advantage of a fresh 

 head each year — a new growth story after story, each on the 

 top of the preceding one ; whereas, in the man, the 'one small 

 head ' had to ' carry all he knew ' year after year. On the 

 other hand, the man is alive all through ; the older parts of the 

 tree are dead and buried in the interior. 



"The heart-wood of any tree is dead, therefore cannot 

 grow. If the lower part of a trunk has increased in length, 

 say doubled it, in a given number of years, either the central 

 wood must have been torn asunder or stretched, or the outer 

 layers have successively slided over the inner ones. An ex- 

 amination of the structure of the wood as clearly shows that 

 neither of the latter alternatives has occurred, as ordinary 

 observation shows, against the first alternative. 



"Can our correspondent bring anyone clear case of evi- 

 dence that a limb has been raised by the subsequent length- 

 ening of a trunk below, excluding all cases such as that 

 formerly referred to in the Tributie, where a tree grow- 

 ing on a rock is bodily raised, more or less, by the 

 thickening of die roots spreading over the rock's surface ? 

 When such a case is brought to view, then the case will be 

 fairly and specifically before the court of invesfigation. 



" But why do not the limbs always remain near the ground ? 

 Answer. — They do until they die off, as the lower over- 

 shadowed ones are pretty sure to do. Hemlock and Pine trees 

 show this perfectly, for the knots remain to show where the 

 branches were. When dead and gone at the surface, the 

 succeeding layers of wood, covering all smoothly over, make 

 'clear stuff,' but it is clear delusion to believe that there have 

 been no branches there ; near the centre the knots or their 

 vestiges are still preserved and plain to see on any section 

 which divides the centre. Does our correspondent suppose 

 that those Sugar Pines of the West, with trunks loo feet 

 high, before a vestige of a limb is seen outside, actually grew 

 to that height without a limb ? 



" But, then, why does not the new external growth bring 

 the (horizontal) limbs each year closer to the ground ? An- 

 swer. — It does, by so much as the branch increases in diame- 

 ter, and also when, long and horizontal, the lower limbs are 

 weighed down. In consequence of this, I have had to lop 

 some White Pine trees which overhang the road, and which, 

 as they increased in weight and leverage, with the increase in 

 length, began to get in the way of teams. In English park 

 trees, where the lower limbs are carefully preserved, it is very 

 common for them to lie on the ground. But at the trunk they 

 will be found to be five or six feet from the ground ; when 

 young, of course, they were as high as that throughout, but 

 have declined by their weight as they increased in length." 



I 



A German Sketch of American Gardening. 



N Herr Jaeger's "Gardening Art and Gardens," which was 

 reviewed in this journal last week, a number of pages and 

 several illustrafions are devoted to landscape-gardening in the 

 United States. The information given is generally correct, 

 and though one would have been glad to see some other pic- 

 ture of an American home replace the "View of Blithewood," 

 which is evidently reproduced from Downing's book, written 

 many years ago, nothing better could have been chosen to 

 illustrate the skill of American artists in dealing with the most 

 fundamental and difficult problems of design than the large 

 scale plans of the Central Park. 



During the rule of the Dutch in New York, the author says, 

 a few formal gardens in the characteristic Dutch style were 

 laid out, but the growing supremacy of the English race soon 

 gave landscape-gardening proper the upper hand. Parmentier 

 is honorably mentioned as the first gardener of importance 

 whose name has been preserved, but to Downing is rightly given 

 the credit of being the first noteworthy American artist in this 

 department. His death, however, is curiously placed in the 

 year 1885, instead of in 1852. His book on " Landscape-Gar- 

 dening" is described as "amply fulfilling its aim as a hand- 

 book," and being "especially distinguished above others of 

 its class by its portrayal of the characteristics of various spe- 

 cies of trees and their proper employment in gardening art." 

 Nothman and Thomas Lee are likewise mentioned as having 

 worked at the same period; and one is glad to note that this 

 foreign author, unlike many native Americans, recognizes the 

 importance of the piazza in American rural architecture and 

 sees its distinctly local significance. A long list of older parks 

 and coimtry-places is given, taken, of course, from Downing. 

 But all these are as nothing, Herr Jaeger explains, in compari- 

 son with the great parks and cemeteries that owe their origin 

 to recent years. To illustrate their character he describes the 

 Central Park, in this city, and Spring Grove Cemetery, in Cin- 

 cinnati. The choice is a wise one, for this cemetery was the 

 parent of the others of its class, and the Central Park repre- 

 sents the successful treatment of the most difficult problem 

 with which any modern artist has had to deal. After 

 quoting a long description of the appearance of the park 

 that had been printed some years before, he says : " The 

 ridge of land which traverses the whole island of Manhattan 

 becomes in the Central Park a rocky 'comb,' which cuts 

 through the park, but does not divide it, for everywhere tun- 

 nels and bridges are placed in such a way as to bind the parts 

 together above and below. The rocks in many places have 

 been made larger and more picturesque by the removal of 

 earth; splits and chasms have been turned into romantic glens; 

 and all this seems as natural as though the hand of man had 

 merely laid out the paths and concourses." Then the follow- 

 ing words are quoted from the pen of a well-known German 

 writer, Otto von Corvin, who visited the park not many years 

 after it was laid out : " When I entered the park a prospect pre- 

 sented itself which, in the neighborhood of a large city, and 

 especially of New York, I had not anticipated. Although 

 unfinished and lacking large trees, this park is the most beau- 

 tiful in the world, as it is the largest [?] and most peculiar. 

 Truly, it does not possess those immense stretches of green, or 

 great, shady avenues we see in the parks of London. Although 

 beautiful meadows do not lack, yet one seems to find one's 

 self in a charming district of the Harz mountains or the Thur- 

 ingian forest. Everywhere rocks appear, and their naked 

 sides are picturesquely clothed with intelligently-planted 

 creepers." The remainder of this description need not be 

 quoted, however, for it recites details with which almost all 

 our readers must be familiar. 



Spring Grove Cemetery Herr Jaeger calls the "most beauti- 

 ful graveyard in the world." Its creator, as every one knows, 

 was Adolf Strauch, a German by birth. He himself often 

 declared that he had got his idea for a park-like cemetery 

 from the description of Chinese graveyards in Humboldt's 

 " Cosmos ; " but Herr Jaeger says there was no need for him 

 to go so far afield since he might have seen in Germany cer- 

 tain cemeteries portions of which, at least, were laid out in a 

 park-like manner. "But in truth," he adds, "they are not 

 even remotely to be compared with such a work of art as 

 Spring Grove." Many other cemeteries and parks are noted 

 with approval but the words used about one or two of them 

 are worth quotation as showing that all does not look fair 

 and laudable in American gardening to intelligent foreign 

 eyes. " In the South Park in Chicago," the author says, 

 "flower-bed artisticalities reach the verge of lunacy, for with 

 bright plants there have been formed figures in relief and 

 portrait-heads, etc., as much as six feet in height. . . . And 

 the park in Boston (by which is meant the Common and the 

 Public Garden taken together), in spite of its size, must be 

 called petty in arrangement, presenfing a monstrous mixture 

 of Franco-Italian and English gardening styles, and being 

 tastelessly encumbered with flowers." 



In conclusion, Herr Jaeger says that great interest is now 

 universally felt in all the thickly setfled districts of our coun- 

 try with regard to private grounds and gardens ; and he notes 

 with approval the promising fact that in laying out new towns 

 and enlarging old ones, landscape-gardeners are more and 

 more frequently called upon to give their help. The charac- 

 ter of his book being popular and historical rather than tech- 

 nical, he does not lay so much stress upon the ability of our 



