April io, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



169 



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, APRIL 10, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



I'AGE. 



Editorial Articles: — The Boundaries of tlie New Parks. — Utilizing Saw- 

 Mill Refuse. — Good Rules for Planting. — The American Forestry 



Congress , 169 



Gardening in Florida 170 



The Art of Gardening — An Historical Sketch. IIL — Egypt and Mesopo- 

 tamia Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. 170 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 171 



The Oriental Nelumbium Naturalized in America (illustrated), 



E. D. Sturtevant. 172 



Cultural Department : — Why Seeds Fail to Grow C. L. Allen. 174 



Palms W. H. Taplin. 176 



Orchard Notes : — North and South Slopes. — Atmospheric Drainage. — 



Grafting Cherries. — Too Few Varieties Professor L. H. Bailey. 176 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum. J. xyj 



Principles of Physiological Botany. XV Professor George Lincoln Goodale. 177 



Correspondence: — The Mutilation of Conifers J. R. Leesaii. 178 



Periodical Literature , 179 



Exhibitions : — The Flower Show at Philadelphia 179 



Notes 180 



Illustrations : — The Sacred Lotus in New Jersey 173 



A Japanese Lotus Vase 175 



The Boundaries of the Newr Parks. 



THE attempt to secure a legislative enactment author- 

 izing the Park Commissioners to sell such portions 

 of the new park lands in the annexed district of this city 

 as they might deem proper aroused such strenuous opposi- 

 tion that it seems to have been practically abandoned. 

 The promoters of this scheme, however, have conceived 

 another which is a trifle less audacious. They have re- 

 vised the maps of the new parks to suit their purposes, 

 and- now ask the legislature to sanction these changes and 

 to empower the Park Board to sell such lands outside of 

 the new boundaries as the city has already acquired. 



In examining the merits of this proposition it should be 

 remembered that really we have no new parks. A park is 

 an organized work ; it is the expression of some design. 

 The city possesses only certain pieces of ground which are 

 to be used as the foundation of parks in the future. The 

 boundaries of these lands were not fitted to any design 

 whatever, but were laid down by a board of worthy citi- 

 zens in accordance with their notions about the adjustment 

 of conflicting interests and a vague idea that the city 

 needed about so inany acres. No doubt the particular 

 shape of the territory was a matter of minor consequence 

 to them, and they would probably mock at an expert who 

 should assert that ten acres lying somewhere adjacent to 

 the limits of their park land might be worth ten times as 

 much as any other ten acres next to the boundary line, but 

 on the inside. Of course no cursory examination by the 

 best landscape-gardener in the world would enable him to 

 say where the boundaries should be. No one could tell 

 this unless he had the essentials of a design outlined in his 

 mind, and a design implies serious study. No study by 

 any competent expert has here been made. The bounda- 

 ries have been determined altogether without relation to 

 any plan, and of course, if any good plan is adopted they 

 win need to be adjusted to suit it. 



Here was the fundamental mistake. No one would at- 

 tempt to construct a park without a design, and certainly 

 the counsel of the designer could never be of greater value 

 than in the selection of a site. When a site is chosen in a 



general way, it will be evident to a competent artist that it 

 is adapted to some leading motive. In working out this 

 motive, the prominent features of the scheme will enable 

 its author to decide where the park should begin and end. 

 In studying the plan of one of the new parks the maker 

 will be certain to come to a point where a piece of land 

 outside the given boundaries will be found essential to the 

 consistency and unity of the design, and if this land can- 

 not be secured, another motive must be adopted. Here 

 runs a ridge, for example, and on its crest a road must be 

 laid. It is plain that certain unsightly or incongruous city 

 structures will grow up in full view from this pleasure drive, 

 and they can be only shut out of sight by tree-plantations 

 upon lands outside the present boundaries. After the 

 land for Central Park had been purchased it was plain that 

 more space was needed at Fifth and Eighth Avenues on 

 Fifty-ninth Street to secure some dignity of approach and 

 entrance. To complete the design in the artists' minds 

 blocks were added also at the northern end of the park, and 

 these additions were made at enormous expense. For simi- 

 lar reasons, and because the designers showed that the value 

 of the Prospect Park site would be many times multiplied by 

 the change, its boundaries were swung entirely out of their 

 original position. The same thing will happen in the case 

 of the new parks, unless the designing is entrusted to some 

 journeyman, who will have no trouble to fit his kind of 

 park into any given space. The journeyman's work does 

 not grow out of an idea, but is run into a mould. 



But because these boundaries will probably need modi- 

 fying, it does not follow that their revision should be en- 

 trusted to a ward politician, or to his lawyer, or to a firm 

 of brokers in neighboring real estate. To invite counsel 

 from artists of this sort would be worse than the original 

 folly of asking none. It is plain that the boundaries of 

 the park lands should be left as they are until advice is 

 had from some one competent to fit them to a consistent 

 design, and competent to give intelligible and coherent 

 reasons for the changes if any are required. A work of 

 this magnitude demands creative talent of the highest 

 order, and it should be entrusted to no other than a recog- 

 nized master in his art. The completion of the parks is 

 not a matter of immediate concern, although the city is 

 sweeping towards them with ever-increasing speed, and 

 the selection of a designer should not be long delayed. 

 But until that selection, and the best possible selection, is 

 made there can be no excuse for meddling with the park 

 lands or their boundaries. Let them alone. 



There has always been in this country an enormous 

 waste of wood at the saw-mills in sawdust, slabs and other 

 parts of logs too small or of too poor quality for use as 

 lumber. The value of this refuse, could a market have 

 been found for it, would easily have amounted during 

 many years to millions of dollars every year. Its dispo- 

 sition has always been a serious labor and expense to 

 manufacturers. For many years the sawdust was poured 

 from the mills directly into the streams. But this 

 practice assumed such vast proportions in some parts of 

 the country that the streams became entirely choked up 

 and so injured that both the general Government and some 

 of the States were obliged to pass laws to protect rivers 

 from this debasement. The burning up of all the waste from 

 a large mill, amounting perhaps to seventy-five or a hun- 

 dred cords a day, is difficult and expensive ; it necessitates 

 the use of an expensive furnace and a large force of men 

 and teams ; but the greater demand for wood-pulp and the 

 improved methods of preparing it recently introduced are 

 gradually turning what was once pure waste into a valu- 

 able product. The use of soda, applied in the wood "di- 

 gester" simultaneously from above and from below, is 

 changing methods of pulp manufacture ; and the time 

 perhaps is not remote when the great fires which burn 

 day and night for months at a time, wherever lumber is 

 manufactured on a large scale, will go out, never to be 

 relig-hted. 



