June 26, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



301 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BV 



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, JUNE 26, il 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles: — Thinning Plantations. — Red Cedar Pencil-wood 301 



Topiary Gardening in Japan (witli illustration) 302 



Notes on tlie Production of Maple Sugar % G. Jack. 302 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Goldring. 303 



New or Little Known Plants : — A Hybrid Catalpa (with figure) C. S. S. 303 



Cultural Department: — Forcing the Gladiolus ...John Thorpe. 304 



Spring Bulbs H. J. Elwes . 304 



N otes on Wild Flowers F. H. Horsford. 306 



Orchid Notes F. Goldring. 306 



Spraying Fruit-trees Professor L. H. Bailey. \o-j 



Heating Green-houses Peter Henderson. 307 



Aster afpinus albus. — Gillenia trifoliata. — Silene Pumilio O. 308 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum y. 308 



The Forest : — Forest Interests in Pennsylvania. II y. B. Harrison. 309 



Corkespondence : — The Purple Beech at Throgg's Neck. . . George Theo. Lyman. 310 

 Peter Henderson's Plant Factory S. 310 



Exhibitions : — The Boston Rose and Strawberry Show 311 



Recent Plant Portraits 311 



Noi ES 312 



Illustrations : — -A Hybrid Catalpa 305 



A Japanese Garden 307 



Thinning Plantations. 



IN " Observations on the Treatment of Public Planta- 

 tions ; More Especially Relating to the Use of the 

 Axe," by F. L. Olmsted and J. B. Harrison, we have a 

 more direct and explicit discussion of the evil of over- 

 crowding trees in parks and public grounds, and of the 

 necessity of proper thinning than has before been pre- 

 sented m this country in popular form. The Report is 

 addressed to Mr. Killian Van Rensselaer, as it was pre- 

 pared at his suggestion, in behalf of the West End Im- 

 provement Association, the Torrey Botanical Club, the 

 Park Commissioners of New York and others interested. 

 It had its origin in the popular outcry which arose in this 

 city last winter in protest against thinning the trees in Cen- 

 tral Park. Mr. Olmsted was one of the designers of the 

 park, and he has had as much both of culture and expe- 

 rience in landscape-art as any member of his profession, 

 and his judgment in all that pertains to the use of trees 

 and their relations to each other, in parks and public 

 grounds, is probably not surpassed by that of any living 

 artist. The Report sets forth precisely what any man, 

 possessing the technical knowledge, which is the only 

 possible basis for an intelligent judgment of the matter, 

 would be compelled to say under the circumstances. 



One of the most serious hindrances to progress and suc- 

 cess in the management of public parks in this country 

 has, for many years, been the fact that a public sentiment 

 has been cultivated, the effect of which, in numerous in- 

 stances, has been to keep trees standing that should have 

 been cut out, and, in a general way, as this Report ob- 

 serves, "to prevent the free exercise of any specially com- 

 petent judgment upon the question of thinning public 

 plantations." The popular feeling on the subject is natu- 

 ral and, at present, inevitable. It is only a special form 

 or development of the general conviction that in this 

 country men are competent to decide almost any question 

 without special training or preparation. There has been, 

 hitherto, little respect in America for technical knowledge, 

 except in connection with the industrial and money-mak- 



ing arts, and the popular mind is still inclined to reject the 

 idea of its necessit}^ But the changes in the conditions of 

 life here during the last twenty-five years have rendered it 

 far more necessary than it was before. The need of 

 special training in the management of public parks in- 

 creases steadily, just as the requirement for technical 

 knowledge in the other pursuits of civilized life is made 

 more imperative by the increasing variety, complexity and 

 costliness of modern ways of living. 



The people of an entire community, or its principal citi- 

 zens, may be possessed of a high degree of general intel- 

 ligence, and may have much special culture of various 

 kinds, without the special equipment or training which 

 would enable them to determine whether the trees in a 

 park have been properly thinned and developed or not. 

 Their judgment regarding the question of cutting out par- 

 ticular trees is probably not more apt to be right than their 

 judgment of the special medical treatment required in a case 

 of pneumonia or yellow fever. But it will be a long time 

 before this truth will be generally recognized and under- 

 stood, and the work of the few men who have any special 

 knowledge of matters pertaining to park management will 

 often be thwarted by vexatious interference, or defeated 

 altogether by attacks inspired by untrained and erroneous 

 opinion. The development of a higher degree of special 

 knowledge in the public mind is necessarily a slow work, 

 as is also such an advance in civilization and general at- 

 tainment as will enable our people to recognize the neces- 

 sity for special training wherever it is required, and will 

 also incline them to leave to men who possess adequate 

 training and equipment the decision of whatever belongs 

 to their special art or department of knowledge. 



If this Report could be carefully considered by the most 

 intelligent men and women of our principal cities it would 

 help to prepare the way for an advance in the methods of 

 park management in the matter with which it deals, but 

 the entire discussion will have to be repeated again and 

 again, with varying special illustrations as new cases of 

 difficulty and error arise from time to time. Most com- 

 munities are impatient for immediate effect in tree-plant- 

 ing, and trees are put in at first which every competent 

 landscape-artist knows should be removed in a few years. 

 But when the time for their removal has come, no one is 

 likely to recognize its necessity unless he is qualified to 

 judge of the matter by the special training and technical 

 knowledge of a competent landscape-artist. 



The Report is enriched by a great number of quota- 

 tions from the leading writers of this country and Europe, 

 bearing directly and most pertinently upon the question 

 discussed. The authors conclude, after a very thorough 

 examination of the park, that the tree-cutting, of which 

 complaint was made, was not excessive, but that addi- 

 tional removals should be made, especially of trees which 

 were not originally intended to remain permanently, and 

 this conclusion is undoubtedly correct. 



The manufacture of Red Cedar pencil-wood has for years 

 been almost exclusively confined to Florida, where this 

 tree grows to a large size and in great perfection. The 

 business has been in the hands of a large foreign house, 

 which supplies a good part of the world with lead pencils, 

 and has been profitable. Large Cedar timber, straight 

 grained, and of a suitable quality for pencil-stuff has be- 

 come scarce in Florida along the streams on the west coast, 

 where the best was found ; and factories are springing up 

 in different parts of the south, especially in Alabama, where, 

 at Gurley, sawing pencil-stuff is already a considerable in- 

 dustry. The best Red Cedar, however, now left will be 

 found near the Red River, in Texas, and in the Indian 

 Territory, where this tree attains a greater size than it 

 reaches in Florida, while the qualit}^ of the lumber is not, 

 probably, in any way inferior. 



The world has become so accustomed to using pencils 

 made of red cedar that it will not readily adapt itself to 

 any others. The supply of this lumber of suitable quality, 



