March 20, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



133 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted 



by . . 





. Professor 



c. s. 



Sargent. 



ENTERED AS 



SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT 



' NEW 



YORK, N. Y. 



NEW 



YORK, 



WEDNESDAY, 



MARCH 



20, 



1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles : — A Proposed Invasion of Central Park. — History of 



Gardening 133 



Longleat (with illustration) 134 



The Art of Gardening.— An Historical Sketch. I. 



Mrs. Schtiylcr Van Rensselaer. 134 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 135 



New or Little Known Plants : — Helianthus mollis, var. Cordatus (with 



illustration) ■ S. W, 136 



Cultural Department : — Vineyard Notes and Studies A. W. Pierson. 136 



Some Useful Decorative Plants '. W. H. Taplin. 138 



Notes from a Northern Fruit Garden T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 138 



Orchid Notes F. Goldring. 138 



Veronica officinalis H. M. Pratt. 139 



Plant Notes : — The Soap-h-ee of the Chinese George Nicholson. 139 



Principles of Physiological Botany. XH Professor George Lincoln Goodale. 140 



Correspondence: — Squirrels and Conifers TJiomas Meehan, B. E. Fernow. 141 



New Hampshire Forests J. R. Leeson. 141 



The American Pomological Society:— The Meeting at Ocala, Florida. IH 141 



Methods of Orange Culture C. F. A. Bielby. 142 



The Kaki, or Japan Persimmon B. F. Livingston. 142 



Periodical Literature 142 



Recent Publications : — Field and Hedgerow 143 



Recent Plant Portraits 143 



Notes 144 



Illustrations : — Helianthus mollis, var. Cordatus, Fig. 100 137 



Longleat 139 



A Proposed Invasion of Central Park. 



IT seems as though there would never be an end of the 

 necessity to defend the Central Park against aggres- 

 sions and mutilations of one sort or another. A bill has 

 once more been introduced into the Legislature authorizing 

 the city authorities to issue bonds to obtain $300,000 for the 

 erection of new buildings within the park for the menagerie 

 which already exists there, and to extend its zoological 

 collections. So often have similar bills been defeated, in 

 deference to a genuine burst of popular sentiment expressed 

 through newspapers and journals of every class, that we 

 cannot feel serious fears that this time the result will be 

 less fortunate. Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon us 

 to say again that a scheme favoring the extension or 

 even the permanent maintenance of a zoological collection 

 anywhere within the borders of the Central Park is wholly 

 pernicious and indefensible. It looks neither towards the 

 best interests of the park nor towards those of the zoologi- 

 cal collection itself There is not a foot of the park which 

 is not absolutely essential to its chief and only proper func- 

 tion as a breathing-space and pleasure-ground for the peo- 

 ple, or a foot which can be sequestered without injuring 

 that design which, as all critics, native and foreign, have 

 agreed, is one of the very finest examples of landscape- 

 gardening art that the world possesses. And, on the other 

 hand, a good zoological garden ought itself to be a work of 

 art — carefully planned for its special purpose and much more 

 extensive in area than it could be within the Central Park. 

 This, however, is not the only scheme which has recently 

 been advocated for the invasion of the park. In the pages 

 of the PJiarmaceuiische Rundschau — a respectable and 

 usually well edited trade-journal published in German in 

 this city — a long article has been published declaring that 

 the proposed botanical garden, of which much has lately 

 been heard, ought by all means to be laid out within the 

 bounds of the Central Park. A botanical garden, rightly 

 established and conducted, would injure the park quite as 

 much as a zoological garden. As much even as a zoological 

 garden it needs to be controlled by scientific men, free 

 from the interference of politicians. It appeals, more dis- 



tinctly than a zoological garden, not to idle curiosity, but 

 to intelligent curiosity and the definite desire for knowledge, 

 and therefore is even less appropriate in a great popular 

 pleasure-ground. And, finally, the soil of the Central Park 

 is unfit for the establishment of a great botanical collec- 

 tion. Every old New Yorker knows what this tract of land 

 was before Messrs. Olmsted and Vaux took it in hand. 

 One great reason M'^hy it is so exceptionally interesting 

 among works of landscape-gardening lies in the fact that 

 Nature had seemed to say, Here, whatever you do, you 

 cannot make a beautiful park. And the same fact partially 

 explains that necessity for cutting out its plantations which 

 from time to time excites well-meaning, but mistaken, 

 popular protests. All other considerations apart, then, 

 would it not be the height of folly to establish a botanical 

 garden in a place which has been made a beautiful park 

 only under the greatest difficulties? 



In the proposed new parks in the northern section of the 

 city there is room and to spare for both a fine zoological 

 and for a fine botanical garden. Let the legislature there 

 set apart the necessary space for them. Let money be col- 

 lected from private givers in such amounts as will show a 

 genuine popular interest, and then let the legislature, if 

 needful, assist from the public treasury ; and, as we have 

 already advised, let governing associations, free from 

 political control, be incorporated similar to those which 

 control the Metropolitan and the Natural History Museums. 

 Thus, indeed, there would be a chance that we should have 

 collections worthy of the name. Nor need it be objected 

 that the new parks would be too far from the centres of 

 population to be really useful. We must think of the future 

 as well as of the present ; and even to-day, as has been 

 pointed out by those in charge of the scheme for a botani- 

 cal garden, the borders of the Bronx are as accessible as 

 was Fifty-ninth Street when the Central Park was planned. 

 By the elevated railways they can be reached from the City 

 Hall in less than an hour, while these railways and the 

 Bridge bring Brooklyn and Jersey City much nearer than 

 they were to the Central Park twenty years ago. 



We shall hardly be accused of a lack of interest in the 

 establishment of a botanical garden at least, or of a failure 

 to appreciate the fact that if rightly established and main- 

 tained it will be a boon and benefit not only to this city, 

 but to the American people at large. Nevertheless, we 

 frankly say that we would rather never to see it established 

 than see the Central Park — that great monument to Ameri- 

 can art and i^riceless pleasure-ground of the poor — curtailed 

 and ruined for its sake or for the sake of any other scientific 

 or political or money-making scheme. It is certain, too, 

 that the whole public shares our feeling, and that there 

 would be no surer wav for a legislator to ruin himself in the 

 eyes of the people than to make himself an instrument in 

 the defacement of the Central Park. 



We begin this week a series of articles on the art of 

 gardening which will both interest and instruct our readers. 

 Born in the earliest times, this art has been practiced 

 wherever men have lived in settled communities. It 

 has gone through many phases, each of which reflected 

 the spirit and the tendencies of the passing age, and has 

 differed in different countries in harmony with the charac- 

 ter of national -civilization. Its developments in Europe, 

 like those of all the other arts, may be grouped under two 

 main types, one of which, as Alexander Humboldt pointed 

 out, illustrates the temperament and expresses the aesthetic 

 ideals of the South, while the other stands in the same re- 

 lation to the North ; and perhaps the most interesting por- 

 tion of the history to be laid before our readers will explain 

 that intermingling of these two types in modern days which 

 finds a parallel in the present condition of architecture, 

 painting and sculpture. 



A number of histories of the art of gardening have been 

 published in other languages, and German literature, 

 especially, offers several of considerable size, compiled with 

 much industry, and covering the whole field. But so far 



