88 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 366. 



a good one could be found than that upon the base of the Hale 

 statue ? . It runs thus : 



" Nathan Hale, a Captain in the regular army of the United 

 States, who gave his life for his country, in the city of New 

 York, September 22d, 1776. ' I regret that I have but one life 

 to give for my country.' Erected by the Sons of the Revolu- 

 tion of the State of New York." 



This, I think, supplementing the dramatic expressiveness of 

 the figure itself, tells enough to satisfy, for the moment, any 

 person, if such there be, to whom Hale's name is strange, and 

 tells it in such a way as to excite sympathy and interest. Be- 

 sides this, it contains no superfluous words, and has the liter- 

 ary merit of directness and conciseness. And the quoting of 

 Hale's own words is a proper tribute to their fame as well as 

 to his character. 



In contrast to this the inscription on the base of the statue 

 of Ericsson, in Battery Park, is as inadequate as is the statue 

 itself. The name is on the front of the pedestal, and on the 

 back we read : 



" The City of New York erects this statue to the memory of 

 a citizen whose genius has contributed to the greatness of the 

 Republic and to the progress of the world." 



These words tell us nothing that we should not have known 

 without them. It is presupposed that every citizen to whom 

 a statue is erected in a public place has well served his com- 

 patriots, and through them the world at large. But there are 

 many kinds of genius, many ways of being serviceable. An 

 inscription which might with equal propriety serve on the me- 

 morial of any other noted American was not worth the trouble 

 of writing. What was needed on the Ericsson monument was 

 something specifically explanatory of Ericsson. 



I know that we are sometimes told that no monument ought 

 to bear anything but the name of the man whom it honors ; in 

 other words, that no man deserves a public monument whose 

 identity is not known, whose services are not familiar to all 

 his fellow-countrymen. But I think, under any conditions; 

 this is an exaggeration of the broad truth that only real serv- 

 ants of the public deserve to be publicly commemorated. And 

 certainly it is not a code of procedure to be acted upon in a 

 city so big and so cosmopolitan as ours. Washington, Lincoln, 

 Grant — men like these <lo not need to have their identity ex- 

 plained, for every one, even the newly landed foreigner who 

 has any intelligence whatever will have heard as much about 

 them as an inscription could tell. Even in such cases a 

 few pregnant words on a statue's base, especially if they 

 were once uttered by the man commemorated, often help 

 to arouse the imagination and quicken the pulse. But 

 we must have many foreigners, many school-children, and 

 possibly some adult Americans even, who are not familiar 

 with the names of Hale, Greeley, Seward, Ericsson, Far- 

 ragut and many another man who is worthy of a public 

 memorial. We are not likely to have too many statues, 

 provided we erect none which are not genuine works of art ; 

 and, when they represent men about whom the slightest 

 doubt may exist in the mind of the humblest passer-by, let 

 them bear some words of terse suggestion or explanation. 

 But to be of this kind the legend must be definite, certainly not 

 vague ; and it ought, of course, to be free from such verbal 

 faults as may be noted in the Ericsson inscription, which says 

 " whose genius has contributed — " although referring to a man 

 whose genius is no longer at work. Again, it ought to be in 

 plain sight and easily read. I have found from observation 

 that few persons discover anything more on the Ericsson 

 pedestal than the mere name in front ; and even if one does 

 examine the back, the lettering is not readily deciphered. On 

 the other hand, the Hale inscription is on the front of the ped- 

 estal where no one can miss it ; and it is so plainly printed in 

 raised letters of bronze applied to the smooth granite that 

 every one must see and read it. 



I am not discussing just now the artistic merits of our mon- 

 uments, else I might well enlarge upon a theme already 

 familar to the readers of Gai^den and Forest — the degree to 

 which the right effect of a figure depends upon the appropri- 

 ateness and the beauty of its pedestal. This point, again, could 

 not be better illustrated than by the base of the Hale monu- 

 ment. Its circular shape, so well suited to the composition of the 

 lines of the figure, the delightful color of its reddish granite, 

 and the refined character of the architectural details, are not 

 more remarkable than the skill with which the inscription has 

 been applied, so that it charms the eye even before it speaks 

 to the mind. But the public may be trusted, I think, to appre- 

 ciate the excellence of this pedestal, as well as that of the 

 statue it bears, and to apply the standard thus set to all future 

 memorials which may be erected in New York. I will only 

 add that, while every one is aware that the statue is the work 



of Mr. McMonnies, it may not be as generally known that the 

 design of the pedestal and its inscription is due to Messrs. 

 McKim, Mead & White. ,, ^ „ 



New York. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



The Effect of Bad Seasons on the Growth of Trees. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — In the course of the study of Spruce-timber in the state 

 of Maine, data have been discovered which illustrate strikingly 

 the effect of the weather upon the growth of trees. The most 

 satisfactory evidence of this kind is a band of very thin rings 

 in the trees throughout the region, these rings corresponding 

 with a series of cold and stormy years known to have occurred 

 in the early part of this century. 



There is abundant testimony to the inclemency of the years 

 during and immediately following the war of 1812. "Their 

 unusual severity in the state of Maine is established from a 

 variety of sources. Meteorological records kept by Professor 

 Parker Cleveland, of Bowdoin College, prove the general low 

 temperature of these years, while histories of the state and of 

 different counties, private records and oral testimony tell 

 reliably of the storms and frosts, which probably were respon- 

 sible for the effects upon vegetation to a greater extent than 

 the general low temperature. The seasons of 1812, 1815 and 



1816, however, seem to have been the most severe. In the 

 two last named almost no crops were raised in Maine, the 

 year 1816 marking the culmination of the series. A consider- 

 able snow fell about the lothof June, causing the leaves to fall 

 from the deciduous trees in some regions, while frosts and ice 

 are said to have formed in every month of the year. It must 

 be distinctly stated, for reasons which will appear later, that 

 1812 was the first of the inclement seasons, while the year 



1817, on the other hand, was the last which by any means can 

 be included in the series. 



Turning now to the record left on the trees by these cold 

 seasons, it is to be said that throughout the state the older 

 trees* uniformly show it. Generally six or seven rings' are 

 thinned. As few as three have been noted, but more fre- 

 quently the rings concerned overrun the usual number. Gen- 

 erally, the belt is very plainly marked, the rings being reduced 

 to but a fraction of their usual thickness. Frequently within 

 the belt there is a group of three rings reduced nearly or quite 

 to microscopic dimensions. This feature is so striking, and 

 has been so widely formed, that the conclusion has been 

 inevitable that the phenomenon is due to some common cause. 

 This cause, not improbably, was the severe weather of 1816, 

 stopping growth and causing the deposit of the small-celled 

 wood characteristic ordinarily only of the autumn. On this 

 supposition, the year 1816 might have grown all three of these 

 rings. 



Confidence that the facts have been rightly interpreted is 

 established hy the size of the region through which the thin 

 rings have been found. My investigations have extended 

 across the entire state of Maine, from the New Brunswick line 

 into northern New Hampshire and the White Mountains. 

 Having personally counted the rings of some 1,400 Spruce- 

 trees throughout that region, I believe it is a fact that east of 

 the White Mountains I have never looked for this record and 

 failed to find it in a tree that eighty years ago was in condi- 

 tion to receive it. Some trees on the high slopes of the White 

 Mountains do not show this feature, but it seems probable 

 that their exposed situation may be the explanation of this, 

 and not that they are on the boundary of the region in which 

 the cold years were felt. 



One more matter remains to be treated — the position of the 

 belt in the tree. Most of my observations were made in the 

 winter of 1893-4, between which time and 1817, seventy-six 

 seasons of growth had passed. Supposing, then, that no effect 

 of the cold years held over into succeeding ones, the first ring 

 that is distinctly thinned, in case each year deposits a single 

 ring, should be the seventy-seventh from the bark. This is, in 

 fact, sometimes the case, but far more frequently the thinning 

 begins nearer the heart. Reckoning from the inside of the 

 belt, and from the rings just identified with the year 1816, a 

 similar result is reached. The rings are too many to corre- 

 spond with the years, the discrepancy in most cases amount- 

 ing to three or four. The conclusion, from the data gathered 

 seems to be that, even in ordinary seasons, most or all of our 

 forest Spruces deposit occasionally an extra ring. This is an 

 important physiological fact, and it is at variance with accepted 



* Spruce only is included in this statement. Of other species a few Hemloclts 

 examined showed the same fhinj^, while Pines examined in larger numbers, and in 

 a variety of conditions, do not show it. Belts of thin rino:s are found, but, maintain- 

 ing no constant position, they are judged to be due to individual causes. 



