February 20, 1S95.] 



Garden and Forest. 



71 



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 VORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles ; — Defacement of Parks in Buffalo 71 



Charts of Tree Leaves 72 



Botanical Notes from Texas.— XXIV £. N. Flank. 72 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 73 



New OK LiTTi-E-KNOvvN Plants :— Gladiolus tristis concolor. (With figure.) 74 



Plant Notes 74 



Cult-jral Department :— Cultivating the Persimmon J. Troop. 75 



The Grapery /f '• Do^.i.ms. 76 



Preparatorj' Worli IV. H. TafUn. 76 



Novelties in Annuals J. N. Gerard. 76 



Notes from the Harvard Botanic Gardens Robert Cameron. 77 



Damping Off Michael Barkir. 77 



Peristrofjhe speciosa, Strobilanthes isophyllus Robert Cameron. 77 



Correspondence :— California Orant^e Groves William F. Tisdale. 78 



A Venturesome Hepafica H. J. S. 78 



A Search for Gold Thread M. L. D. 78 



Meetings of Societies; — Western New York Horticultural Society.— IV 79 



Notes 79 



Illustration :— Gladiolus tristis concolor, Fis;. 10 75 



Defacement of Parks in Buffalo. 



N the annual report of the Buffalo Park Commissioners 

 _ for 1 89 1 the Superintendent complained that in the 

 various minor squares, and to a certain extent in the larger 

 parks, the plantations were suffering serious injury not only 

 from thoughtless trespassing, but from purely malicious 

 mischief. This complaint has been repeated by the Super- 

 intendent in every successive report, and in that for 1894, 

 which has just come to hand, the Commissioners them- 

 selves say that in The Parade the greensward is so cut 

 across with beaten tracks and the general aspect of the 

 grounds is so shabby and forlorn that the place is an 

 offense to the eye and an affront to common decency. 

 But, worse than the destruction of the park, is the debase- 

 ment of the public sense of right and wrong in this matter, 

 for the Commissioners declare that it is useless to attempt 

 any renovation of the place until a higher standard of public 

 duty has been established. Trees, shrubs and plants are 

 mutilated in broad daylight, lawns are seamed with ragged 

 paths, outrages against common decorum ai'e committed, and 

 park ordinances are contemptuously ignored. Inasmuch 

 as there are only seven patrolmen for the whole park sys- 

 tem of the city, whose business it is to preserve order in as 

 many widely separated parks, the police force is evidently 

 not responsible for this lawlessness. And, even when 

 arrests are made, public sentiment, expressed through 

 the courts, sustains petty trespassing, and the offender 

 knows that if he is arrested the Judge will be as likely to 

 reprimand the patrolman for making the arrest as to punish 

 the offender for the destruction of the public property. 

 Under such conditions, all attempts at creating or maintain- 

 ing ar.ything like landscape beauty is a mockery, and all 

 monev spent for this purpose is worse than wasted. This 

 vandalism is worse in one park than in others, but it 

 is gradually spreading to all, so that, in the language 

 of the report, " the standard of keeping for all the parks 

 must finally be such as can be maintained on the suffer- 

 ance of the meanest vandals of the community." 



When the project of building a park in the centre of Man- 

 hattan Island was first suggested, some good men consid- 

 ered the scheme preposterous, because, as they asserted, 



it would certainly be made the field for the rough sport of 

 the more depraved elements of the community. Wiser 

 men held that a beautiful piece of scenery would largely 

 be its own protection, and such a public regard for it would 

 soon develop, that protection from thoughtless or malicious 

 injuries could easily be secured. Of course, the city did 

 not begin by putting a hundred acres or so of park land 

 under the control of a single policeir.an, for wherever there 

 is a proper regard for any pleasure-ground there will be a 

 public sentiment which will ensure an adequate force for 

 its safety. But at the very outset there never seemed to be a 

 disposition to deface Central Park, or if there was, prompt 

 suppression in the beginning prevented the growth of such 

 a lawless sentiment. This has been the experience of most 

 American cities. In San Francisco, where there are more 

 showy flowering shrubs and trees in the parks than there 

 are in any other American city, we have never heard of 

 any trouble of the kind. There is no such trouble in Bos- 

 ton in the parks or in the Public Garden ; there is none in 

 Brooklyn, none that we ever heard of in Philadelphia or 

 Baltimore. Even in Chicago, where the original design of 

 the parks has been ignored, and where some of the ground 

 has been treated in the most vulgar v/ay by the managers, 

 the condition of things is not so bad as it appears to be in 

 Buffalo from the report of its own officers. 



It is not to be assumed that the people of Buffalo are 

 less law-abiding than the inhabitants of other cities, but 

 in this one particular the community offers a striking ex- 

 ample of the demoralization which invariably comes when 

 offenses, which seem trivial at first, are permitted, until 

 their constant repetition without reprimand or punishment 

 invests them with the character of privileges and inalien- 

 able rights. The trespasser justifies his action by the state- 

 ment that the people own the parks and, therefore, the 

 people have a right to use them as they choose. The correct 

 statement of his reasoning is that since all the people 

 own the parks, therefore any one of the people can do with 

 them as he pleases, and this is the essence of anarchy. The 

 popular cry against boundary fences as obstacles which 

 prevent the people from enjoying the parks — that is, barriers 

 which prevent one man from entering the city property at 

 any point he may prefer — and the cry for the free use of 

 the turf because everybody owns the park meadows, and, 

 therefore, anybody has a right to walk upon them, are both 

 examples of this individual self-assertion which does not 

 recognize the fact, which is the basis of civilized society, 

 that a community has an organic life of its own, and that 

 each man owes it respectful and loyal obedience. Every 

 sensible man in Buffalo knows this, but there are some 

 people in that city who have walked where the}^ pleased 

 so long that they now resent as a violation of their 

 natural rights any attempt to restrain them from making 

 paths across the turf, and the persons who have been per- 

 mitted to break shrubs and carry a\va)' flowers for a time 

 have come naturally to believe that the shrubs are planted 

 for this purpose exclusively. 



It seems that there was once a wooden fence, which in 

 some measure protected one park from vi'ear and deface- 

 ment. When this began to need repairs it was broken 

 at every point where any one wished to enter or cross the 

 ground, and public sentiment had become so firmly set 

 against a fence that no appropriation could be obtained for 

 one. Of course, the park is completely wrecked, but the de- 

 basement of public morals is much more serious than the 

 damage to turf or trees, for this generates and develops 

 a spirit which ultimately makes all public property unsafe. 

 The enlightened people of the town must realize that some- 

 thing should be done promptly to regenerate the public 

 morality in this particular. Such a sentiment ought to 

 make itself quickly felt by strengthening the protective 

 force of the parks and by compelling judges to en- 

 force laws against trespassers. It will be much harder 

 to do this now, since these laws have been so long violated 

 with impunity. But a beginning should be made at once. 

 The public parks of our country in rapidly growing cities 



