MarC»30, 1S9S.] 



Garden and Forest. 



119 



Recent Publications. 



TTie Silva of North Ainerica : A Description of Trees 

 which Grow Naturally in North America, exclusive of 

 Mexico. By Charles Sprague Sargent, Director of the 

 Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University. Illustrated with 

 figures and analyses drawn from nature by Charles Edward 

 Faxon. Volume VII. Lauracese-Juglandaceae. Houghton, 

 Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. 1895. 



The purpose of this work and the way in which it 

 is being carried out are both so well understood, that 

 it is only needed here to glance at the contents of this 

 volume to show that our rich forest flora continues to sus- 

 tain the interest in the subject which was aroused by the 

 appearance of the first volume. In addition to the great 

 Laurel Bay of California, Umbellularia, the Perseas of our 

 southern Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and several other species 

 of comparatively limited range, such well-known trees as 

 Sassafras, four species of Elm, two of Hackberry, two 

 of Mulberry, three Sycamores, four Walnuts and eight 

 Hickories are described in this volume. Of the fifty-four 

 plates, from drawings by Mr. Faxon, it only needs to be said 

 that they continue to show that accuracy and refinement 

 which place them in the very front rank of work in their class. 



77ie Florida Sketch-book. By Bradford Torrey. Hough- 

 ton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. 



This is a reprint of a series of papers written for the 

 Atlantic Monthly. Their aim is simply to embody Mr. 

 Torrey's recollections of a pleasant vacation tour, part of 

 which was spent in the wilds of eastern and southern 

 Florida, part in the hilly region in the northern part of the 

 same state. The writer visited Florida for the purpose of 

 studying the birds of this semi-tropical region, and of con- 

 trasting their habits with those of the same and kindred 

 species in their New England home. The subjects are 

 such as would suggest themselves to a naturalist while 

 exploring new fields, but the treatment is individual, and 

 the whole book has a delightful atmosphere and reflects 

 throughout the charm of a happy personality. 



It is refreshing, in these days, when there seems no end 

 to the making of Nature books, to come upon some unpre- 

 tending little volume like The Florida Sketch-book, which dis- 

 plays on every page the clear vision of the true observer. 

 For Mr. Torrey's touch, though light and often playful, as 

 should be the touch of one who writes in holiday mood, is 

 always firm and true and sometimes exquisitely tender. 

 Underlying the bright fancy and gay humor, which are char- 

 acteristic of his attitude toward Nature, is a solid base of 

 accurate knowledge, combined with a delicate appreciation 

 of every phase of natural beauty. He has, moreover, 

 something of the poet's gift — that perceptive sympathy 

 with the life of Nature, which is as incapable of analysis 

 as the color of the rose or the perfume of the violet, and 

 which separates by a narrow though impassable gulf the 

 record of the true interpreter from that of the mere "subur- 

 ban reporter." This gift manifests itself with as much cer- 

 tainty in some apparently careless allusion to the habit of 

 a flower or the ways of a bird, as in the formal word-paint- 

 ing of a landscape. And, although Mr. Torrey may not 

 have realized Thoreau's ideal description of a flower, so 

 that he can reveal what the child sees in it to admire 

 and love, he often, by a delicate imaginative touch, 

 establishes at once some subtile sympathy between the 

 reader and the inhabitants of the woods or fields. Thus, 

 when he speaks of the Mullein stalk as "presenting arms 

 along the roadside," the soldierly bearing of the plant is 

 given at a single stroke, and when he characterizes the Part- 

 ridge-berry as a " Yankee in Florida," we feel the breath of 

 northern woods in the monotony of the Pine-barren. 



In Mr. Torrey's interpretation of bird-life we find the 

 same full sympathy. Sometimes it is revealed in an elab- 

 orate study of an individual, as in his description of the 

 omnipresent great blue heron, familiarly known as "The 

 Major," which is always at home near the water, and there 



is water everywhere in Florida. "On the beach, as every- 

 where else, the heron is a model of patience. To the best 

 of my recollection I never saw him catch a fish there ; and 

 I really came to think it pathetic, the persistency with which 

 he would stand, with the water half-way to his knees, 

 leaning forward to the breakers, as if he felt that the great 

 generous ocean, which had so many fish to spare, could 

 not fail to send him at last the morsel for which he was 

 waiting. " No reader can forget the happy phrases in which 

 the tree-top flirtations of the flickers are described ; we 

 fairly tire of the monotonous music of the tufted titmouse, 

 which pipes on and on without rest or variation, "as if his 

 diapason stop had been pulled out and stuck fast"; and we 

 at once appreciate the preternatural gravity of the pelicans 

 when we are told that the writer could never see even a 

 single pair of them going by in Indian file " without feeling 

 as if he had been to church." 



Though the object of Mr. Torrey's tour in Florida is to 

 study the manners and customs of his feathered friends in 

 their southern environment, no sooner does he enter the 

 land, where it is always afternoon, than, in spite of his 

 Puritan inheritance, he yields to that delightful southern 

 insouciance "which takes life as made for something better 

 than worry and something pleasanter than hard work." 

 And he confesses with charming frankness that the pleas- 

 antest of all his Florida memories are of the occasions 

 when, forgetting all his botany and ornithology, "he 

 climbed the hill in the cool of the day, and after an hour 

 or two spent on the plateau strolled back again, facing the 

 sunset through a vista of moss-covered Live Oaks and 

 Sweet Gums." One hardly knows where to stop when 

 beginning to quote, and we might continue for pages to 

 show how all the air which rests upon this half-tropical 

 scene is filled with leisure and languor; but Mr. Torrey 

 cannot divest himself even in this golden land of the in- 

 fluence of his New England inheritance and discipline. 

 The quiet and incurious hours, which are so delightful to 

 recall, owe their very fullness of enjoyment to the acute 

 powers of observation which have been trained to act with 

 automatic precision by many a vigorous tramp, with open 

 eyes and alert senses, over New fingland hills. It is his 

 deep love for his northern home and his familiarity with 

 every phase of its varied beauty which enable him to in- 

 terpret with so much poetic feeling the vague and evasive 

 charm of the southern landscape. "A Yankee in Florida" 

 might well serve as a subtitle to his little book, for he never 

 forgets New England's woods and hills. Sometimes in a 

 felicitous phrase he contrasts the characteristic features 

 of the northern and southern landscape, as when he 

 remarks that the "pine wood-sparrow does for the south- 

 ern Pine-barrens what the field-sparrow does for the 

 northern berry pasture." Sometimes the contrast is 

 instructive, as vi'hen writing of the unconfined beauty 

 of the road borders, he says : "The southern highway sur- 

 veyor, if such a personage exists, is evidently not con- 

 sumed by that distressing puritanical passion for 'slicking 

 up things,' which too often makes his northern brother 

 something scarcely better than a public nuisance. At the 

 south you will not find a woman cultivating a few ex- 

 otics beside her front door, while her husband is mowing 

 and burning the far more attractive wild garden that nature 

 has planted just outside the fence." Or, perhaps, the remi- 

 niscence is full of tenderness, as when in the course of 

 his journeyings he comes upon a solitary hermit-thrush 

 in the thicket, as he occasionally did, and not one 

 of them ever sang- a note. "Probably," he adds, "they 

 did not know that there was a Yankee in Florida, who, in 

 some moods, at least, would have given more for a dozen 

 bars of hermit-thrush music than for a day and a night of 

 the mocking-bird's medley." The book is delightfully free 

 from any effort to point a moral, but it again demon- 

 strates that the more one loves his home and the more in- 

 telligent is the delight he takes in its natural beauties, the 

 more profound is his sympathy with the novel phases of 

 nature in remote and strangely different regions. 



