October 23, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



505 



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, OCTOBER 23, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Attacks on Civilization 505 



Chatsworth. (With illustration.) 506 



Asters and Golden-rods E. S. Gilbert. 507 



New or Little Known Plants : — Spirsea Millefolium. (With fig;ure.). ..C.S. S. 508 



Plant Notes: — Vaccinium Vitis-Idsea J. M. Macoun. 508 



Holiday Notes in Southern France and Northern Italy. — II., 



George Nicholson. 508 



Cultural Department: — Notes on Begonias J. N. Gerard. 510 



Pandanus IV. H. Taplin. 511 



The Guava in Florida G. E. Walsh. 512 



Orchid Notes A. Diminock, J. Weathers. 512 



The Hardy-plant Border T. D. Hatfield. 513 



Primula cortusoides Sieboldii E. O. Orpet. 513 



A Contrivance for Watering Lawns G. 513 



The Meeting of the American Forestry Association 514 



Notes 516 



Illustrations : — Spiraea Millefolium, Fig. 137 509 



Chatsworth 511 



Attacks on Civilization. 



IT is a matter of importance for the American people to 

 learn as soon as possible that under the conditions of 

 our national life, nothing in our civilization will keep very 

 long. It must be perpetually reproduced, must in some 

 way always be the fresh expression of the life and thought 

 of the time, or it will decay and vanish. Whatever may 

 be true of other countries, with us nothing valuable is ever 

 secure. This is not always understood or remembered, 

 and when any good thing is gained our people are apt to 

 think that continued interest in that particular matter is 

 unnecessary.. This baseless notion of security invites at- 

 tack, and most of our battles have to be fought over again 

 under somewhat different conditions. 



It is but a few years since the land about the Falls of 

 Niagara was withdrawn once for all and forever from the 

 realm of money-making uses, and dedicated to entirely 

 different objects. The people of the state, after a most de- 

 liberate and thorough discussion of the matter, decreed that 

 here there should be an opportunity for the tranquil, undis- 

 turbed exercise and delight of the higher faculties of hu- 

 man nature. The establishment of the State Reservation 

 was a distinct advance in civilization. It cost years of 

 strenuous effort, and a large amount of money. When 

 it was accomplished the friends of human progress re- 

 joiced. But while the quiet festival with which this 

 achievement was celebrated was in progress a new attack 

 on Niagara was planned. Some men could not bear to see 

 so much power going to waste, and they have ever since 

 been busy with imaginative schemes for illuminating the 

 country or propelling its machinery by utilizing the great 

 waterfall. 



Niagara is owned by the state of New York, having 

 been solemnly set apart forever from private ownership 

 for the express purpose of preserving its unparalleled 

 scenery. Is it therefore secure .^ Not at all. An account 

 of the movement for the redemption of Niagara, written in 

 1885, observes that "great wisdom and decision will 

 always be required adequately to protect the Niagara 

 Reservation from the encroachments of greed and vulgar- 

 ity. In the nature of things it can never be safe for the 



people of intelligence, good taste and public spirit, of the 

 state of New York, or of the country at large, to withdraw 

 all oversight and interest from the management of the 

 Reservation and the care of the scenery about the Falls." 

 Under existing conditions — that is, with our present degree 

 of development — there is no possible arrangement by 

 which Niagara can be made secure. It will be the object 

 of perpetual attack, and will require constant effort for its 

 defense, until the mass and average of the people of our 

 country become sufficiently enlightened to understand the 

 true value of the place and its scenery, and to prize it for 

 the "vital feelings of delight" which it inspires. The 

 men who "saved Niagara" a few years ago will not live 

 to see that time. If the people of this state, and of the 

 country, intend and expect to keep the State Reservation 

 at the Falls free and unspoiled, they must be always on 

 guard. No electric light or power plant of any kind can 

 be established or operated at the Falls without impairing 

 the value of the scenery, and fatally interfering with the 

 objects for which the Reservation exists. 



The account already quoted (from \}i\& Neiv Princeton Re- 

 view), declared that the movement to save Niagara is of 

 peculiar interest, because it was the first effort made in this 

 country on so large a scale to use the machinery of gov- 

 ernment for an object of this kind — that is, for a purpose 

 belonging so entirely to the realm of elevated sentiment 

 and noble spiritual emotion. No sordid element modified 

 or degraded the pure ideal which the laborers in this move- 

 ment set before them from the beginning. No person made 

 any money out of it. There was no stain or shadow of 

 jobbery from the inception to the final accomplishment of 

 the enterprise. Here was a great natural possession of un- 

 paralleled beauty, with peculiar power to inspire wholesome 

 and elevated emotions, to calm the fevered unrest of our 

 crowded, hurried modern life ; to delight and reinvigorate 

 all who feel that "the world is too much with us, late and 

 soon," and to minister to the sanity and happiness of mil- 

 lions of toiling men and women through all coming time. 

 It was certain to be speedily destroyed and its priceless 

 loveliness extinguished in cureless ruin, unless the state 

 intervened to save it. The great state of New York has 

 never acted more wisely, or more in accord witli the high- 

 est civilization of the age, than when she devoted a million 

 and a half from the pubUc treasury to make the region about 

 the Falls of Niagara free to her people and to mankind for- 

 ever. Such objects will always be easier of accomplish- 

 ment in America because of the precedent thus established. 



The truth that the best things in our civilization are sub- 

 ject to constant attack appears also in the difficulty of main- 

 taining parks and open spaces in our large cities. One of 

 the reasons offered in favor of confiscating Central Park for 

 the World's Fair is that a great building, or more than one, 

 erected for the fair, may be left standing permanently, to 

 add to the attractions of the park. To those who under- 

 stand the true value and uses of a park this would be a 

 reason on the other side. A pastoral park is not a place 

 for buildings, and the minimum of artiticial constructions 

 should be the rule in all places of the kind. It was wrong to 

 take a part of City Hall Park in this city for the Post Office, 

 and it is entirely natural that the result of this uncivilized 

 proceeding should be one of the ugliest buildings, for its 

 size and cost, in our whole country. If we had been suffi- 

 ciently developed to produce a beautiful and noble building 

 we should never have thought of putting it in the park. It 

 would be far better for the city if there were no buildings 

 in this park except the old City Hall, which is the only one 

 possessed of any architectural merit. 



Perhaps the necessity of perpetual struggle to maintain 

 what we have, is not so much to be regretted as many 

 people think. The constant wariness and effort thus re- 

 quired are the condition of all farther advance. If it were 

 possible, which it never is, or can be, to make everything 

 safe, we should probably lie down in peace and rot. Luxury 

 and inaction would bring on atrophy of the higher cjualities 

 of the national character, and unless they are maintained 



