July 24, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



351 



numerous unfailing springs give cheerfulness to the scenery- 

 is selected, encompassed with a high wall, and interspersed 

 with towers for the reception of the hunters"; and some 

 writers have believed that this brief account describes the 

 character of Persian paradeisoi in general — that they were 

 merely portions of ground which Nature herself had made 

 beautiful, carefully protected from hurtful alterations. But 

 Plutarch is careful to relate that the park in which Artaxerxes 

 permitted his soldiers to despoil for firewood stood "in the 

 midst of a region naked, and without trees "; and if these 

 special words imply, perhaps, nothing more than a natural 

 oasis in a wilderness, there are others which more definitely 

 indicate the arts of cultivation and arrangement. Plutarch 

 says of the park which Tissaphernes named for Alcil)iades — a 

 true /arrtc/^/j'^j, not a mere garden — that it contained "salu- 

 brious streams and meadows," but also " pavilions and places 

 of retirement royally and exquisitely adorned"; and wherever 

 in ancient times there were buildings that could be thus des- 

 cribed, the adjacent landscape must likewise have been 

 " royally and exquisitely adorned " — not left in the wild graces 

 of nature. It is only in modern days that men have failed to per- 

 ceive that the essence of beauty is harmony ; that the essence 

 of harmony is the likeness in fundamental character of one 

 thing to another ; that architectural beauty and the untouched 

 beauty of nature, though equal in' value, are dissimilar in 

 character; and that each must be accommodated to the other if 

 a satisfying general effect is to be the result. No Egyptian, 

 Assyi'ian, Persian or Greek would have allowed the virgin for- 

 est or the untended champaign to come up close to the walls of 

 temple or palace. In the park at Celsenae where Cyrus the 

 Younger reviewed 13,000 troops, there were of course vast 

 open spaces ; yet through the middle of it, says Xenophon, 

 ran the river Maeander. " Its springs issue from the palace 

 itself, and it runs also through the city of Celsenae." A park 

 which lay between palace and city, and a river which ran from 

 beneath the palace itself, certainly imply some degree of for- 

 mal, architectural treatment. 



Several passages which I have already quoted show that 

 trees were extensively planted by the Persians. Nor was it 

 only in situations where they could not possibly have grown 

 by themselves, as in city streets and squares, for the parks 

 which Cyrus the Younger fonned during his journeys were 

 " stocked with everything good and valuable that the soil will 

 produce ; " and the scene where Lysander expressed his aston- 

 ishment at Cyrus's personal prowess in tree-planting was the 

 famous paradeisos at Sardis. This last-named incident, I may 

 say in conclusion, gives us decisive proof that in such great 

 parks a portion of the planting, at least, was done in a strictly 

 formal way. Lysander admired not only the beauty of the 

 trees, but "how regularly they were planted, how straight the 

 rows of thein were and how elegantly all the rows formed 

 angles with one another." * 



At " Shushan the Palace," as described in the book of Esther 

 Ahasuerus held his great feast in the "court of the garden," 

 which was hung about with embroidered draperies. The 

 Persians used columns profusely, although the Assyrians and 

 Babylonians did not. Ahasuerus has been identified with 

 Xerxes, and in the splendid palace of this king at Persepolis 

 may still be seen a wide, unwalled space with various groups 

 of stately columns, sometimes called the " summer throne- 

 room," which may well have been planted like a garden and 

 used for feasts and audiences. Or, if "Shushan the Palace " 

 means Susa, here also may be traced the remains of a similar 

 court-yard. 



In short, we may conclude that in Persia the art of garden- 

 ing meant a combination or alternation of formal with natural- 

 seeming arrangements. Symmetiical court-yards, regular plan- 

 tations and stone-walled canals gave harmony to the neighbor- 

 hood of buildings and formed adjuncts to such magnificent 

 terraces and external stairs as we see at Persepolis, while 

 more distant parts of the domain were left in their natural 

 state or merely beautified without losing their character ; and 

 cultivation was everywhere carefully practiced. Are not 

 the ideals of the intelligent modern artist foreshadowed in 

 these facts ? And must we not deeply regret that we know so 



* " A person of high spirit and honor, naturally a king though fatally prevented 

 by the harmless accident of post-geniture, not only a lord of gardens but a manual 

 planter thereof, disposing his trees like his armies in regular ordination ... all 

 stories do look upon Cyrus as the splendid and regular planter." These words 

 occur in "The Garden of Cyrus," a curious and interesting treatise by the famous 

 seventeenth century writer, Sir Thomas Browne. The essay, however, like many 

 of its time, is but loosely connected with its title. Accepting Cicero's statement 

 that the regular rows and angles which Lysander admired in the plantations of 

 Cyrus meant an arrangement in "quincunxes" — in a succession of patterns like 

 that on a five-spot of cards — Sir Thomas passes into a rambling dissertation, 

 finding, as Coleridge said, "quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth be- 

 low, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots 

 of trees, in leaves, in everything." 



little about the parks of the Persians ? One can hardly imagine 

 a more interesting relic of antiquity than a plan of 2^ paradeisos 

 could it be recovered — preferably, perhaps, the plan which 

 would show us how Cyrus arranged his pleasure-ground at 

 Celsenae so that he could hunt wild beasts within its limits yet 

 review a great army in safety, and so that it formed a harmo- 

 nious setting for the palace with a river flowing from its base. 

 When Pliny wrote in his "Natural History" that "the first 

 Plane-trees that were spoken of in terms of admiration were 

 those which adorned the walks of the Academy at Athens," 

 he had in mind only Greece and Italy. He must have been 

 familiar with Herodotus' story of the giant Plane that so delighted 

 Xerxes near the borders of the Hellespont, when he was march- 

 ing towards Greece, that he lingered foran entire day beneath its 

 shade — imperiling his expedition by the act — decorated it with 

 a golden circlet and left an officer of rank to serve as its guard- 

 ian. In explaining the different varieties of Palms, Pliny says : 

 " The most famous of all are those which, for the sake of dis- 

 tinction, have received the name of ' royal ' Palms because they 

 were preserved solely by the kings of Persia. These used to 

 grow nowhere but at Babylon, and there only in the garden of 

 Bagoas, the eunuch ; . . . this garden was always carefully re- 

 tained within the precincts of the royal court." Anecdotes like 

 this help us to divine the almost passionate love that the Per- 

 sians had for trees ; and so many plants now familiar in Euro- 

 pean lands have come from Persia that we may fancy its 

 gardens rich with a variety of beautiful blossoms as well as 

 with those odorous shrubs the cultivation of which was ren- 

 dered necessary by a profuse employment of perfumes and 

 unguents. 

 New York. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



Notes Upon Some North American Trees. — 11. 



21. PoRLiERA ANGUSTiFOLiA, Gray. — This is a common plant 

 on the dry plains of the lower Rio Grande valley, where I 

 have observed it in Texas and Mexico. It is everywhere 

 a low, upright shrub, with thickened stems, which are 

 rarely six feet high. It cannot in any sense be considered 

 a tree, and must be dropped from the Silva. 



22. Xanthoxylum Americanum, Miller. — Although this 

 plant may be grown in gardens into a small tree with the 

 aid of skillful pruning, it does not appear to become natur- 

 ally a tree anywhere, and it should be dropped from the 

 Silva. 



23. Xanthoxylum Carib^um, Lam. — The proper name of 

 this south Florida tree, which was first described by Nut- 

 tall (Sylva iii, /. 85) as X. Floridanum, is still in doubt. It 

 has been referred to the West Indian X. Carihceum, which 

 is said to be prickly, while the Florida plant is quite un- 

 armed. It differs, also, in some minor characters from the 

 description of Lamark's plant. Professor Gray doubtfully 

 proposed to call the Florida tree X. CaribcBum var. Florida- 

 num (Proc. Am. Acad., new sen xxiii. 225), but it will be 

 necessary to examine authentic specimens of the different 

 West Indian species before this question of nomenclature 

 is settled. 



Xanthoxylum emarginatum, Sw. — This handsome plant 

 was collected by the late Dr. Garber in 1877 on Virginia 

 Key, in Bay Biscayne, Florida. It has not been seen else- 

 where in Florida, where it is probably exceedingly rare. It 

 was not found by Mr. A. H. Curtiss, who has carefully ex- 

 plored the flora of the Florida Keys, and I failed to detect 

 it anywhere on the shores of Bay Biscayne, to which I 

 have made three separate journeys. Professor T. C. Porter, 

 who has placed, most obligingly, his specimens in my hands, 

 informs me that Mr. Garber left no notes upon this plant, 

 which both IMacfayden and Grisebach speak of as a tree 

 or shrub. It inay, perhaps, properly therefore find a place 

 in the North American Silva. IMore information of its habit 

 of growth, and of the size which it attains is, however, de- 

 sirable. I am quite ignorant of the character of the bark 

 of this plant, of the nature of the wood which it produces, 

 and of the situations and soil in which it is found. Pro- 

 fessor Porter calls my attention to the fact that some of the 

 leaflets on the Florida specimens are obtusely pointed, the 

 others emarginate as described by Swartz and by Grisebach, 

 who gives (Fl. Brit. West Indies, 137), under Tobinia 

 emarginata, the full synonymy of this species, A specimen 



