2o6 



Garden and Forest. 



[May I, I J 



conflagrations which occur in the farming-regions of the 

 United States, and which every year sweep over tens of 

 thousands of acres during the few weel<;s of dry weather, 

 which follow the melting of the snow in spring before the 

 appearance of the new leaves, which generally put a stop 

 to these early fires. Rarely does a spring pass without the 

 atmosphere over Long Island and New Jersey being filled 

 with the smoke of forest-fires, which can be traced to this 

 wasteful and careless method of farming; and what occurs 

 in this neighborhood occurs pretty generally all over the 

 territory of the United States wherever farms are culti- 

 vated. Such fires are set without much attention to the 

 state of the weather or the direction of the wind ; they are 

 carelessly watched, or not watched at all, and soon reach 

 leafless shrubs and trees, and a forest-fire which may 

 sweep over thousands of acres is started. 



Dead grass and leaves should never be burned. It is an 

 expensive and wasteful custom, and a sure indication of 

 extravagant and therefore bad management. Where it is 

 desirable to make the ground about a house neat, or to 

 prepare it for the lawn-cutter, the dead leaves and grass 

 should be raked up into piles and carried away to the 

 compost heap, or to be used for the bedding of animals. 

 Such refuse material is well suited for this purpose, and 

 should be freely used. The manure pile can be greatly 

 increased in this way ; or, if dead leaves and grass are 

 piled up and turned over occasionally they will be con- 

 verted into leaf-mould at the end of a couple of years, 

 and so furnish the very best material possible in which to 

 plant many trees and shrubs. A pile of leaf-mould is 

 essential in every good garden, and the bigger it is made 

 and the more freely this vegetable-mould is used, the better 

 the garden will be. In the case of larger fields which can- 

 not be raked over every spring, the dead grass and leaves 

 should be allowed to remain on the ground, which they 

 serve to mulch and enrich. It is a poor policy and thriftless 

 management which burns up plant-food in large or in 

 small quantities, and sooner or later it will make the best 

 land sterile. 



and a tree set every four feet in the row, they can be culti- 

 vated by horse-power for a few years, and will then furnish a 

 screen as protection against the wind, a stick for a sled- 

 tongue or vine-trellis now and then, and every autumn 

 hickory nuts, walnuts and chestnuts in abundance for the 

 children. Admirable directions for selecting trees for 

 planting and caring for them afterwards are given, and the 

 Bulletin will prove of value to many people besides those 

 of Michigan, to Avhom it is particularly addressed. 



The Gardens of Levens Hall. 



T.HERE appeared in a recent issue of Garden and 

 Forest a view of the terraced garden at Wellesley, 

 Massachusetts — the finest example of topiary gardening 

 in America. The illustration upon page 211 represents 

 one of the best examples of work of this sort which exists 

 in England — the old gardens of Levens Hall, near Miln- 

 thope, in Lancashire, a mansion which, it is said, dates in 

 part from the eleventh century, and which is famous for its 

 splendid old oak carvings. The gardens contain seven acres 

 of clipped trees, planted and first brought into shape by the 

 gardener of James I. A large part of these trees and of the 

 grand old hedges which serve to divide the garden into 

 different compartments are Yew and Box, although there 

 are closely-clipped Hollies often more than thirty feet in 

 height. Here are still preserved examples of the old 

 pleached alleys of Shakespeare's time, and green paths laid 

 down two hundred and fifty years ago on slate slabs, 

 placed eight inches below the surface, once used for bowl- 

 ing-greens, and still as level as a billiard-table. 



Very interesting is Bulletin No. 45, lately issued by Pro- 

 fessor Beal, who is at the head of the Department of Bot- 

 any and Forestry at the experiment station connected with 

 the Agricultural College of Michigan, as well as one of the 

 Directors of the State Forestry Commission. In an imagi- 

 nary conversation a farmer in one of the older settled 

 counties of the State is made to say : 



"Generally, of late years, when there is a heavy fall of snow, 

 it is soon so unevenly distributed that we have little idea of 

 how much has fallen. It piles up along the north and south 

 roads, and blows from some parts of the east and west roads. 

 The wheat-field has many bare spots, while in other places the 

 drifts are deep. Since I cut off that piece of timber down 

 there and brought to view the farms over west for a couple of 

 miles, the wind has frequently swept over my fields with a great 

 deal of force, sometimes making things fairly jingle, and when 

 cold, the air seems to penetrate the smallest cracks in my pens, 

 sheds and barns. The pigs squeal, the cows give less milk, the 

 horses shiver and even the hen-coop is too freely ventilated. I 

 believe the animals at such times eat more grain and fodder 

 than they do when there is less cold air in motion. The house, 

 too, gets colder in the night than it used to when there were 

 few strong winds. I am sure I have to lay in a larger supply 

 of fire-wood than I used to. When I came to this neighbor- 

 hood much of the land was still covered with a dense, virgin 

 forest, and as one block of woods after another disappeared, I 

 noticed the winds became more frequent and penetrating." 



As a partial remedy against these winds which drift the 

 snows and freeze out the wheat in winter, and shake off 

 the fruit and lodge the grain in summer, the Bulletin sug- 

 gests the planting of a grove to the west of the farm build- 

 ings. Professor Beal shows how little it will cost to plow 

 a strip a rod wide and ten or fifteen rods long, to harrow it 

 as if fitting the field for corn, and to plant in it small trees 

 which can be bought in quantity at considerably less than 

 a cent apiece. If the furrows are cut four feet apart, 



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

 Mesopotamia and Judea. 



THE building of pyramidal hills for one purpose or another 

 has not been confined to Mesopotamia, whence, of 

 course, Jewish writers must have drawn such ideas as they 

 expressed in the tale of the Tower of Babel. Nor has Baby- 

 lon been the only place where these terraced hills have been 

 laid out as gardens. The sides of the mausoleum of Hadrian, 

 in Rome, now called the Castle of St. Angelo, were originally 

 planted, in part at least; a garden similar to Nebuchadnezzar's 

 is indicated, perhaps, in a vast temple inclosure which now 

 stands in a ruinous condition on the island of Java ; and — 

 allowing for radical differences in vegetation — we may get 

 from the terraced sides of Isola Bella in Lake Maggiore some 

 idea of the effects which so delighted Alexander when he 

 sought repose in the hanging gardens of Babylon. 



Diodorus says that two other great gardens were ascribed 

 to Semiramis. In approaching Chaone, a city of Media, he 

 reports, she "took notice of an exceeding great and high 

 rock, where she made another very great garden m the very 

 middle of the rock, and built upon it stately houses of pleas- 

 ure, whence she might both have a delightful prospect into 

 the garden and view the army as they lay encamped below in 

 the plain." And near Mt. Bagistan — on the high-road which 

 led eastward from Babylon through what are now called the 

 Koordish defiles — she laid out a garden "twelve furlongs in 

 compass. ... It was in a plain champaign country, and had a 

 great fountain in it, which watered the whole garden." The 

 flank of the mountain "towards one side of the garden has 

 steep rocks " seventeen furlongs in height ; and on this wall 

 she caused to be cut a great relief depicting herself surrounded 

 by one hundred of her guards, with an inscription recording 

 the fact that she had ordered all the harness of her innumera- 

 ble beasts of burden to be piled up and had used it as a stair- 

 way to mount to the summit of the rock. The latter part of 

 this account is, of course, the purest fantasy. The great re- 

 liefs which may still be seen in a crumbling state at Behistan 

 are of Persian origin, represent Darius Hystaspes triumphing 

 over the "false Smerdis," and date, therefore, from about 

 B. C. 500.* And the great gardens themselves, including one 

 in Armenia, which was likewise attributed to Semiramis, may 

 confidently be assumed of Persian origin. 



Of Assyrian gardens we know even less than of Babylonian. 

 Trees and vines are represented on the bas-reliefs in such a 

 way that we must believe the king was accustomed to repose 



* See Mrs. Mitchell, History of Ancient Sculpture. 



