February 27, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



81 



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, FEBRUARY 27, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — The Defacement of Scenery Si 



The Care of Urban Parks William MacMillan. 82 



The Chestnut in the West Professor Charles A, Kejfer. 



Plant Notes :— Spiraea Thunbergii. (With fio;ures ) 



Cultural Department :— A Few New Gardt-n Plants J. N. Gerard. 



An^riecum sesquipedale Robert Caineron. 



Amaryllis U'. Tricker. 



Eucharis Amazonica W. N. Craig, 



Violet Notes E. O. Orpet. 



Chrysanthemums T. D. H. 



Grapes under Glass IVilliitm Scott. 



Correspondence : — Inscriptions on Public Monuments.. . ./I/. G. I'an Rensselaer. 



The EfTect of Bad Seasons on the Growth of Trees Austin Cary. Sa 



Meetings of Societie,s : — National Carnation Society 89 



Notes 90 



Illustration^; : — A Flowering Branch of Spirrea Thunbergii, Fig. 11 84 



SpiraBa Thunbergii, Fig. 12 85 



The Defacement of Scenery. 



ABOUT a month ago a bill was introduced into the Mas- 

 ^_ sachusetts House of Representatives entitled "An 

 Act to prevent the offensive use of buildings for advertising 

 purposes.' This act makes it unlawful to paint on any 

 house, barn or other building any advertisement of a patent 

 medicine or other commodity in letters or characters which 

 are more than six inches long and four inches wide, and 

 the violation of this statute is to be punished by a fine not to 

 exceed $500. We hardly understand why obtrusive vul- 

 garity of this sort is more offensive when it is painted on a 

 shed or a mill than when it is displayed on the spacious 

 and ugly board structures which are usually braced up in 

 the most conspicuous parts of the landscape. And cer- 

 tainly natural objects need some protection against this 

 vandalism, for every one has had his feelings outraged 

 when he has seen in different parts of the country rocks 

 and cliffs covered over with highly colored importunities 

 to use one man's ready-made soup or to try another man's 

 remedy for indigestion. Two or three years, ago the news- 

 papers were filled with protests because the face of Storm 

 King, on the Hudson, had been desecrated by such an 

 advertisement, and the correspondence on this subject 

 brought out the fact, which diti not seem to be generally 

 known, that laws in New York state already existed which 

 made such wanton defacement of scenery a misdemeanor 

 to be punished by fine or imprisonment. The prosecutions 

 under these laws have certainly been very few, and no 

 one has ever been sent to prison for violating them. 



Americans are not the only sinners in this respect. It 

 will be remembered that no longer ago than last year the 

 Prime Minister of Great Britain spoke bitterly of the way 

 in which the beauty of the rural and seaside scenery of 

 England was disfigured by this advertising plague. Lord 

 Rosebery said that the people had become so used to see- 

 ing the picturesque and historic beauty of the old towns 

 marred by the paint-pot that they had ceased to utter any 

 protest, but now when the advertiser had covered over all 

 the station walls and gable-ends of town buildings, and 

 was spreading himself over the woods and fields of the 

 country, it was time that steps should be taken by Parlia- 

 ment to put a stop to the destruction. But acts of Parlia- 



ment will do little more good in England than will laws 

 ill the state of New York or in Massachusetts, unless there 

 is a public opinion behind them which secures their en- 

 forcement. Within the limits of this city, and on lands 

 controlled by the Park Department, massive rocks which 

 constitute the chief beauty of the property have been 

 hopelessly disfigured, and yet no action was ever taken 

 against the offender, although the department had ample 

 power to briiig him to punishment. No protest against 

 this defacement was made, so far as we remember, by the 

 press of the city, nor was the department criticised for 

 neglecting to prevent it. 



■This injury to natural beauty will go on just so long as 

 it is not a generally appreciated truth that natural beauty 

 is to a certain extent an inheritance of all the people, that 

 it has a real value like pure air and fresh water, and that 

 the man who destroys it, therefore, violates as distinctly 

 the rights of the public as one does who fills the air with 

 noxious vapors or pollutes the sources of public water 

 supply. Great corporations who build railroads, sink oil 

 wells and open mines and quarries never inquire about the 

 wounds they inflict on the face of nature, and no one pro- 

 tests against the desolation which they make, partly 

 because we consider this one of the sacrifices we are 

 called to make on the altar of material progress, and partly 

 because few people recognize the fact that landscape 

 beauty is anything like a vital necessity to the mental and 

 spiritual health of a people. 



The plain truth is, that natural beauty has an instrinsic 

 value as a refreshment to the spirit, and a restorer of the 

 health of mind and bod}^ It is practically and actually 

 effective in making such appeal to the imagination that as 

 we contemplate it we are elevated for the time above the 

 wear and weariness of every-day life into an atmosphere 

 of restoration and repose — into a realm of higher and 

 serener thoughts which bring health to the body through 

 their tranquilizing influence on the spirit. In short, the 

 contact with natural beauty is one of the potent agencies 

 for establishing sound minds in sound bodies ; and since 

 this is the source and condition of all well-directed ambi- 

 tion and effort, a reckless destruction of this beauty is a 

 blow not only at one of the highest and most satisfying 

 pleasures of the people, but at the public health and the 

 public wealth. 



This is not a merely sentimental or fanciful view of the 

 case. It is fundamental truth. When Lowell writes that 

 "the landscape, forever consoling and kind, pours her 

 wine and her oil on the smarts of the mind," when 

 Wordsworth asserts that the presence of nature "disturbs 

 him with the joy of elevated thoughts," and whenever, in 

 the highest poetry, the elementary and controlling feelings 

 of the soul find expression, this profound truth is recog- 

 nized. No enlightened man disputes it. Why, then, should 

 it not be accepted as sound doctrine that it is one of the 

 inalienable rights of man to enjoy the unimpaired beauty 

 of the world into which he has been born, and that it is the 

 duty of society which has inherited this beauty to trans- 

 mit it unimpaired to posterity '> We may be assured in the 

 first place that this is no transient sentiment which will 

 pass out of fashion. The imagery of the Old Testament 

 and the earliest poetry of the world prove that these same 

 emotions swayed the races who laid the foundations of our 

 modern civilization. Susceptibility to the influence of 

 natural beauty is one of the original and essential qualities 

 of the human mind, and it is never likely to be outgrown. 

 Indeed, we may be sure that the beauty of the outward 

 world which is preserved for posterity will be more highly 

 appreciated by them than it is by us, for this feeling has 

 grown in depth and strength with the growth of the race, 

 and it will probably continue to grow. 



Taking this view of the case, statutes leveled against the 

 irreverent use of paint in the landscape seem to be an alto- 

 gether inadequate expression of what ought to be the pre- 

 vailing thought and habit among cultivated people. It is 

 to be hoped, of course, that the "Massachusetts Legislature 



