September 25, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



457 



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, SEPTEMBER 25, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles; — The Proper Use of Puljlic Parks. — Drives and 



Walks.— Ill 457 



A Cypress Avenue at Verona. (Illustrated.) 458 



Notes uj)on Some Nortli American Trees. — XI . . . .Frofessor C. S. Sargent. 459 

 The Shell-bark Hickory. (With figure.) 460 



Entomological: — A New Enemy of the Elm. (With figure.) J. G. Jaci. ^6i 



KouEiGN Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Goldrmg. 462 



Cultural Department : — Fertilizers for Ornamental Plants, 



Professor C .S. Pluinh. 462 



Fern Notes VV. H. Taplin. 465 



Orchid Culture, Past and Present " Calypso." 465 



Vegetables Under Glass. . . _. W. H. Bull. 466 



Chrysanthemums; Carnations John Thorpe. 466 



Caryopteris Mastacanthus J. G. J. i,(i(s 



Correspondence : — Forests and Civilization. — VIII J . B. Harrison. 466 



The Potent Pollen of the Navel Orange E. H. Hart and E. Williams. 467 



Notes 468 



Illustrations : — Gossyparia Ulmi. (Fig. 129.) 461 



The Shell-bark Hickory. (Fig. 130.) 4S3 



A Cypress Avenue at Verona 464 



The Proper Use of Public Parks. 



IARGE open spaces of public land within the hmits of 

 _j compactly built cities offer a constant temptation to 

 persons who feel that they hold a joint ownership with 

 their fellow-citizens in such property; who feel, too, that a 

 portion of this property is needed for some purpose in which 

 they are specially interested, and which appears to them 

 of vital importance. Urban parks will never be free from 

 the danger of assaults upon their integrity, and of perver- 

 sion to purposes destructive of their highest usefulness, so 

 long as any considerable body of citizens remains unin- 

 structed as to the fundamental reasons which justify their 

 existence and control their design. It would be hardly 

 just to charge with utter selfishness the owners of trotting 

 horses who desire to cut a speed-road through Central 

 Park. They know that such a track would minister to their 

 chosen recreation, and they fail to comprehend that it 

 would defeat the chief end of the park, which is to furnish 

 another and a nobler recreation for everybody else. The 

 same can be said of those who have endeavored to convert 

 the Meadow^s of Central Park into a military parade-ground, 

 and of almost all other persons who have been eager at one 

 tiine or another to condemn the park, or some portion of it, 

 to illegitimate use. The storm of indignant protest which 

 was aroused by the first suggestion that Central Park 

 should be selected as the site for the Exposition of 1892 

 seemed a hopeful sign that public sentiment was becoming 

 more enlightened in this direction ; but, unfortunately, 

 lamentable proof has since been given that there are still 

 men of intelligence and public spirit who are willing to see 

 the park turned into desolation for years and probably for- 

 ever for the sake of a temporary show. It is a discouraging 

 fact that so small a fraction of the population of the city 

 really comprehend the special function in our civic economy 

 which the park is designed to fulfil, and understand that 

 when, for the advantage, real or assumed, of any class or 

 sect, or cause or interest, it is diverted to some use which 

 interferes with its legitimate office, the entire community 

 suffers a wrong. 



The fact that every man in a city has a right to its park, 

 as a park, implies, that no one has a right to it as anything 

 else than a park. This view is not held by certain labor 



organizations in Boston who insist on using Franklin Park 

 as a place for holding mass meetings, and who resent the 

 refusal of the authoi-ities to surrender the park for this pur- 

 pose as an abridgment of the right of public assemblage. 

 Of course, this last charge would have no foundation even 

 if a piece of public ground, admirably situated for the pur- 

 pose, had not been offered, as it was offered, to the labor 

 organizations for their proposed meeting. The pity of it 

 is that these men fail to discern that they have an especial 

 interest, in saving the park from any intrusion that even 

 remotely threatens to impair its efficiency, or limit its 

 capacity, of furnishing recreation for themselves and their 

 children. Franklin Park was designed to offer the most 

 practical and natural and perfect relief from the confine- 

 ment and pressure and wear that are inevitable where 

 men and women are crowded together under the strain of 

 city life. As a direct antithesis to all this, the park fur- 

 nishes the freedom of spacious meadows and open skies, the 

 contact with pure nature, the tranquilizing influence of 

 pastoral scenery, and invitations on every hand to rest or 

 play. The millionaires of Boston have less need of the 

 recreation offered, for they can spend the entire summer in 

 their villas, on the mountains, or by the sea. But it is for 

 those who have no country seats, and who take no vaca- 

 tions, and for their children, that this delightful picture of 

 rural peace stands ready to furnish rest and healing, both 

 to the mind and body. The men who are striving to 

 reduce the hours of labor are precisely the ones w^ho should 

 avail themselves of these privileges during their hours of 

 recreation. Of course a meeting or a demonstration in 

 favor of some movement is utterly out of harmony with 

 the spirit of the place. It would bring into the park the 

 very conditions from which the park was designed to offer 

 a relief and an escape — the jostling throng, the commotion, 

 the stress and heat of excited discussion. It is plain that 

 such assemblages are incompatible with restfulness and 

 peace. Their avowed purpose is agitation, and this means 

 essential antagonism to the purpose of the park. 



It follows without argument, that if the representatives 

 of one movement or cause are allowed to use the park for 

 ■ meetings, other bodies are entitled to a like privilege, and 

 the play-ground will become the chosen spot whei"e re- 

 fonners of all sorts can indulge in a vociferous advocacy 

 of their pet projects. A body of worthy clergymen who 

 form the Evangelical Alliance are even now seconding a 

 demand to permit preaching in the park, and this Avould 

 encounter, besides the objections already mentioned, the 

 special ones which arise from the sensitiveness of many 

 persons and classes in matters of religion. To permit the 

 use of the park for purposes that w^ould be offensive to 

 any considerable number of those who resort there would 

 be a manifest injustice. Wandering sectarian preachers 

 are none too gentle, as a rule, when they are characteriz- 

 ing other creeds than their own, and they can easily 

 succeed in making theinselves disagreeable. A large pro- 

 portion of the working people who most need the park are 

 Catholics, and why should they, for example, be forced to 

 hear their faith attacked in their own pleasure-grounds 'i And 

 if one sect is allowed to preach, the same privilege 

 must be granted to all others. The spectacle of a 

 dozen sects conducting services at the same time might 

 give pleasure to the hoodlum eleinent, but it would hardly 

 minister to the enjoyment of those who were seeking the 

 reposeful influences of rural scenery. 



But urban parks, as we have said, will never be secure 

 against destructive invasion so long as such dense igno- 

 rance prevails as to their appropriate purpose. Cas- 

 ual remarks of several wealthy and accomplished gentle- 

 men of the committee to select a site for the world's fair in 

 this city prove that they have not the slightest feeling for 

 the beauty of natural scenery, nor the slightest apprecia- 

 tion of its value in a city pai'k. They propose to obliterate 

 what is altogether the most valuable and lovely portion 

 of Central Park and speak of the part they hope to con- 

 fiscate as "waste ground, " and talk of "improving" it by 



