May 8, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



i8[ 



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, MAY 8, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGR. 



Editorial Article: — Nature and American Literature iSi 



Conilers in the West ProfessorCImrlesA. Keffer. 1S2 



The Saguenay Region.— I Rei'. E. J. Hill. 182 



What is a Cantaloup? Professor F. A. Watigh. 183 



New OR Lm-i.E-KNOWN Plants : — An Arizona Agave. (With figure.) 184 



Plant Notes: — Cercis Canadensis 1S4 



Cultural Department: — The Munson Grape Trellis.. . ./V^/c.T.yjr /^. .4. U'aic^h. 1S6 

 Kerosene Attachment for Knapsack Spray Pumps. (With figure.) 



Hoiuard E. U^ecif 1S6 



Insect Pests P. O. Orfil. 187 



About Daffodils 7. N. Ccrar,! 187 



Plants for P,eddinK IVilli.tm Seal/. 1S8 



Notes from Baden-Baden 3Li.v Leichtlin. iSS 



Correspondence : — Fall Planting for Sweet Peas 5. 18S 



Notes from West Virginia D,tnskc Dandrid^t-. 189 



R ecent Publications 1 89 



Notes 190 



Illustrations : — A View of the Foot-hills of the Huachuca Mountains, Arizona, 



with Agave Huachucensis in the foreground. Fig. sS 185 



Impro\ed attachment for using kerosene with Knapsack sprayers. Fig. 29. 1R7 



Nature and American Literature. 



EARLY in the year Messrs. Harper & Brothers 

 published a book, by George William Curtis, en- 

 titled Literary and Social Essays. These essays, .gath- 

 ered by Mr. Curtis's literary executors from the various 

 books and periodicals -^n which they were first pub- 

 lished, extend over a period of nearly forty years. The 

 sketches relate chiefly to the group of great Americans 

 who were life-long_ friends of the distinguished author. 

 Though Mr. Curtis was with us only yesterday, his recol- 

 lections run back for half a century, and, therefore, in these 

 reminiscences, we are brought face to face with the noble 

 men who have given to American literature its chief dis- 

 tinction. And as under Mr. Curtis's sympathetic present- 

 ment Irving, Bryant, Thoreau, Emerson, Holmes and Long- 

 fellow pass in review before us, each in his habit as he 

 lived, we cannot but feel that never did any group of men 

 more thoroughly exhibit the true sanity of genius. The 

 most pessimistic critic can find no trace of aberration in 

 any of them, except in the unbroken spiritual solitariness 

 of Hawthorne, or in the rigid adherence to a noble but 

 somewhat impracticable ideal which set Thoreau forever 

 apart from his fellow-men. Strong in moral purpose, self- 

 reverent, self-controlled, these men have the rare distinc- 

 tion of having ennobled literature as much by their lives 

 as by their works, and Mr. Curtis is of their kin. He had the 

 same strong moral convictions, the same deep patriotism, 

 and though he lacked the creative faculty, his critical gift 

 was of a high order, and his literary style, even in his lighter 

 work, has that unmistakable accent of high breeding which 

 must be forever the despair of the mere dilettante in 

 literature. 



It rarely comes within the scope of Garden and Forest 

 to take note of a book so purely literary in its quality as this. 

 But Mr. Curtis, in his interpretation of the work of his great 

 contemporaries, has so clearly, though perhaps uncon- 

 sciously, revealed the ennobling influence upon thought 

 and life, of a right love of nature, that we feel impelled to 

 add a word of comment on this special topic. In all these 

 men of New England birth, including Mr. Curtis himself, 

 we note that, combined with their stern moral rectitude, 



and having its root, perhaps, in the same source, was a 

 deep and genuine love of nature, in which we trace the 

 same earnest simplicity and sanity that marked their lives. 

 And, as our attention is for the moment recalled to the work 

 of these early interpreters of nature, vi'e cannot but remark 

 that they struck a deeper and fuller note than is sounded 

 to-day by even the most sympathetic observers of the beauty 

 of our fields and woods. Unlike some of our modern 

 writers, who complacently accept the title of " High-priest 

 of nature," these sincere men did not seek her solitudes 

 primarily to make notes for a magazine article, or even for 

 simple rest or recreation, but for spiritual strength and sus- 

 tenance. Thus they always wrote w^ith reverence of the 

 beauty of the outward world, and in their work there is no 

 trace of the petty egotism or of the restless craving for 

 sensation which mars many of the so-called nature-records 

 of this more flippant age. 



This sensitiveness to the profounder influences of nature 

 and to what may be called its spiritual beauty is most 

 strongly marked in the men of Puritan descent, as if out of 

 the strong had come forth sweetness, and it is conspicuous 

 very early in the literature of the country. Mr. Curtis tells 

 us that the school readers of half a century ago contained 

 tvv'o poems which every boy and girl read and remem- 

 bered. One of them was Bryant's " March," the other was 

 Longfellow's "April," and though the curious reader may 

 find in the first a more vigorous love of nature, and in the 

 other a more tender tone of tranquil sentiment, both deal 

 with the sights and sounds and suggestions of the Ameri- 

 can landscape in the early spring, and the chord, so lightly 

 touched by the young poets, slowly swelled into rich har- 

 mony in the imaginative prose of Emerson, Thoreau and 

 Hawthorne, the noblest of the group. In Thoreau this 

 enthusiasm for nature was combined with a stern moral 

 purity ; in Hawthorne, with a rich, though sombre, imagi- 

 nation, and in Emerson, with a noble and serene philosophy, 

 but in the moral fibre of all the three was the granite 

 strength of the New England hills, and to their inspired 

 imaginations the tranquil scenery about Concord was a 

 symbol of the repose and balance and harmony of the 

 universe. 



In treating of Irving, Mr. Curtis brings us at once into a 

 lighter, but still a wholesome, atmosphere. Irving, true 

 son of the city that has always been cosmopolitan, cared 

 for nature chiefly in its relation to humanity, and, thouo-h 

 not indifferent to the grandeur and varied beauty of his 

 native land, loved best the rippling landscape of England, 

 made exquisite through cultivation, and in America the 

 picturesque banks of the Hudson, which he has forever 

 made his own by the right of the eminent domain of the 

 imagination. The charming legend of Rip Van Winkle is, 

 in Mr. Curtis's view, the more remarkable and interesting, 

 in that, although the first American creation, it is not at 

 all characteristic of American life, but, on the whole, is a 

 quiet and delicate satire upon it. So, perhaps, it is to our 

 credit that we love the kindly vagabond who asserts "the 

 charm of loitering idleness in the sweet leisure of woods 

 and fields against the characteristic American excitement 

 of the overflowing crowd and the crushing competition of 

 the city." Mr. Curtis, too, makes the acute observation that 

 it is to the author of the Sketch-book and Bracebridge 

 Hall that we owe the conception of rural England, whose 

 charm yearly draws such hosts of American pilgrims to her 

 shores. Only an American could have seen England as he 

 described it, and invested it with an enchantment which the 

 mass of Englishmen had neither suspected nor perceived. 



Mr. Curtis's own attitude toward nature can best be noted 

 in the essays which treat of Hawthorne and of Emerson. 

 In these papers he has given us a description of Concord 

 and its surrounding neighborhood, which is marked through- 

 out by exquisite poetic feeling and the most delicate appre- 

 ciation of its strangely tender beauty. Not only does he 

 manifest deep insight into the profound significance of 

 nature, of which its outward beauty is but the sign and 

 symbol, but his ear is quick to catch the true note wherever 



