May I, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



207 



beneath their shade. f The " sacred tree," which, in a conven- 

 tionalized design, constantly recurs in scenes of sacrifice, 

 doubtless indicates those sacred groves — used for religious 

 rites by many Oriental nations, as well as by the Druids of the 

 north of Europe — which had had their first origin in the 

 tree-worship of primitive races. Royal lion-hunts are por- 

 trayed with landscape backgrounds, and may have taken 

 place in parks especially prepared for the purpose, as we see 

 the beasts being freed from cages, and as such hunting-parks 

 are described in the annals of the later neighboring kingdom 

 of Persia. Moreover, it is impossible to doubt ^ that the vast 

 open courts which formed such a conspicuous feature in 

 Assyrian palaces, and even the fiat roofs, were adorned 

 with a multitude of trees, shrubs and flowers. No pleasure- 

 loving Oriental would dispense with their presence if they 

 could possibly be had ; house-top and court-yard gardening is 

 still a familiar practice everywhere in the East, and nowhere 

 could it have been elaborated on so magnificent a scale as 

 in these vast royal residences, set on their high artificial hills. 

 But with regard to the character of Assyrian gardens we 

 know nothing except that they must have been formal, 

 architectural in arrangement ; nor can we say much more of 

 the plants that filled them than that the Palm, the Cypress, the 

 Vine and the Pine were prominent. J 



Dwelling amid more varied and picturesque surroundings 

 that the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, the Jews can have felt, 

 no such imperious desire to create large parks and gardens. 

 Nor were they a people given to sumptuous forms of private 

 life, nor did their religious ritual sanction a systematic use of 

 flowers in its ceremonials. As we might expect from these 

 facts, there is little evidence to show that gardening art was 

 largely practiced in Judea. Like all other races the Hebrews 

 did, indeed, imagine that the first man lived in a garden, but 

 its charms are not dwelt upon as, for example. Homer dwells 

 upon the charms of the gardens he mentions. We can but 

 divine that the Garden of Eden was thought to have been for- 

 mally disposed with the Tree of Life in the centre, four great 

 rivers flowing in four different directions, barriers all about it, 

 and a gate which could be closed. The idea we have to-day 

 of Eden comes not from the Bible's, but from Milton's pages. 



When the riches and happiness of Job are declared we read 

 nothing of natural beauties or of works of art — his treasures 

 seem to have been flocks and herds and the mere con- 

 sciousness of great wealth. When the building of Solomon's 

 temple is described in Chronicles and in Kings there is no word 

 about gardens or plants ; nor is there in the elaborate account 

 which Josephus gives of this temple and the monarch's palace. 

 We are told that Solomon wrote about plants "from the Cedar 

 tree which is in Lebanon to the Hyssop that springeth out of 

 the wall ; " but he wrote also " of beasts and of fowls and of 

 creeping things and of fishes," and we must imagine a scien- 

 tific, not an aesthetic or horticultural treatise. When it is said, 

 again, that-" Cedars made he to be as the Sycamore trees that 

 are in the vale for abundance," not growing trees are denoted 

 but materials for building.^ Unlike the sacred tanks of the 

 Egyptians, Solomon's was a great lifted basin, and we cannot 

 fancy that plants grew in it or around it. 



Of course these omissions do not indicate that gardens were 

 unknown in Judea. Casual references to them are not infre- 

 quent in Holy Writ, and " the gate between two walls which is 

 by the king's garden " is more than once mentioned — for ex- 

 ample, in the account in II. Kings of Nebuchadnezzar's attack 

 upon Jerusalem. This royal garden seems to have been near 

 the pool of Siloam, where the valleys of Jehoshaphat and Ben 

 Hinnon meet, and to have been approached (Neh. iii. 1 5) by stairs 

 that went "down from the city of David." Josephus tells us 

 " there was a certain place, about fifty furlongs distant from 

 Jerusalem, which is called Etham ; very pleasant in fine gar- 

 dens, and abounding in rivulets of water." Thither did King- 

 Solomon " use to go out in the morning, sitting on high in his 

 chariot." The commentary, called the Mishna, says there was a 



t As an instance o£ the inaccuracy of classic writers it may be noted ttiat Strabo 

 says the Vine did not grow in Susis "before the Macedonians planted it, both there 

 and in Babylon." Yet Vines with their leaves and clusters of grapes accurately 

 displayed may be seen on reliefs from Kouyundjik, now in the British Museum, 

 which date from the period of Assyrian supremacy; and whatever was known in 

 Ninevah must have been known in Babylon and all adjacent Asiatic countries, 

 especially so all-important a plant as this. 



JThe Pine cone appears as an adivinct to sacred rites in Assyria, as the Lotus- 

 fiower does both there and in Egypt, held in the hand of priest or king. 



§ It would be interesting to know just what trees are meant by Josephus when 

 he speaks of the Pine trees which were hi ought to Solomon from Aurea Cherso- 

 nesus. " Let no one imagine that these Pine trees were like those which are now 

 so named, and which take their denomination from the merchants, who so call them 

 that they may procure them to be admired by those who purchase them. For 

 those we speak of were to the sight like the wood of the Fig free, but were whiter 

 and more shining. Now we have said thus much that nobody may be ignorant of 

 the dilTerence between these sorts of wood, nor unacquainted wilh (he nature of the 

 genuine Pine tree." 



Rose-garden westward of the temple mount which had existed 

 from the time of the prophets within the city walls — an exception 

 to the usual Jewish practice of constructing gardens in the su- 

 burbs. In the Book of Esther the kiiig comes " into the palace 

 garden," and a great feast is held " in the court of tlie garden 

 of the king's palace;" but the scene of this story is laid in 

 Persia, not Judea. 'The Garden of Gethsamane seems to have 

 been but an Olive-orchard. 

 New York. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



Chrysanthemums in the Imperial Garden at 

 Akasaka, Tokyo. 



THE following is a translation from Hochi Shinbum, 

 the Tokyo Post, of an account of the latest of the 

 famous annual Chrysanthemum shovv^s in that city. 

 The translation was made by Mr. K. Miyabe, the Japanese 

 botanist now in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 



According to the yearly practice, the gardeners in Tokyo 

 and Saikyo raised many rare and splendid varieties of Chry- 

 santhemums for the Imperial Garden by the special order. 

 On the 8th of November the members of the cabinet, the for- 

 eign ministers and a few others were invited by the court to 

 the " Chrysanthemum Banquet." On the day followmg, the 

 higher officers of the government and nobles were allowed 

 to see the show. 



The following accounts are written from what we have 

 heard from one who enjoyed this special privilege: The first 

 bed, eighteen by 120 feet, was placed just behind the Senkin- 

 kaku (arbor). "The entire bed was roofed with screen mats 

 made of reeds, in order to protect the flowers from frost and 

 sun. From post to post on three sides of the bed a curtain or 

 screen, made of purple silk, with the imperial badge, the 

 Chrysanthemum, relieved in white, was tied round with crim- 

 son tasseled ribbon. The flowers were at their prime. 

 They were of different colors, and their diameters seemed 

 to be about three to four inches. Several himdred of 

 these plants were arranged without any regular order in 

 the bed. Among them, one called the Sugawara, with 

 petals red inside, and yellow on the outer sides, and the 

 Kagaribi, with its crimson flowers, attracted a great deal of 

 attention. 



The next bed to the left was roofed with oiled-paper screens, 

 the rest of the surrounding structures being just the same as 

 the first. In this bed all those varieties having the filiform 

 petals were arranged. A white flower called the " Aunobiki " 

 is worthy of note ; the petals were fine as threads, drooping 

 down in tassels like a water-fall. One variety with crimson 

 petals tipped with yellow was very conspicuous. 



To the right of Shuhotei there was one bed twelve by sixty 

 feet, planted with thirteen different root-stocks, each support- 

 ing numerous grafted branches rising from the stem a little 

 above the ground, ai"id crowned with flowers of different colors 

 and shapes. 



Next, to the right, was a bed (eighteen by sixty feet) for 

 large-flowered varieties. 



Parallel to this was a bed in which only three plants were set 

 out. The first one, called the Golden Dew {Ogontio Tsiiyic), was 

 decked with 338 blossoms, all golden-yellow. The next 

 named, the Hanakai, had 253 blossoms of red color. The 

 last, the Sanono Watari, was covered with 173 white blos- 

 soms, and impressed one as the best of the three. The 

 flowers were all about one and one-fifth of an inch in diam- 

 eter. 



The next bed contained about 420 plants of about sixty dif- 

 ferent varieties. Each plant was allowed to bear only one 

 flower, and the diameter of the flowers was mostly about 

 fifteen or sixteen inches. This bed seemed to be the 

 crowning show of the day. The banquet was held in an arbor 

 set up on the lawn just in front of this bed. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



The Kew Arboretum. — V. 



T N England the words Pine and Fir are very frequently used 

 -'■ without any definite idea of their meaning ; indeed, some 

 people make them apply to almost any Coniferous plant. Even 

 nurserymen and foresters use the word Fir indiscriminately 

 for both the Spruces (Piceas) and the Silver Firs (Abies). 

 Cobbett, in " The Woodlands," published by him more than 

 sixty years ago, includes Pines in his sweeping condemnation 

 of the "villanous race of Firs." That energetic writer ex- 

 presses himself in terms as vigorous when occupying him- 



