May 22, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



20 [ 



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. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESD.iLY, MAY 22, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article : — Popular Books about Flower.s 201 



Parks, Parkways and Pleasure-o;roiinds. — II.... Fi-cderick Law Olmsted, 202 



When is Rhus to.xicodendroti Most Active? Dr. V. Hai-ard. 203 



In the Pines Mrs. Mary Treat. 203 



Foreign Correspondence; — Primulas IV. Watson. 204 



Plant Notes 20 5 



New or Little-known Plants : — A Blue Water-lily from Mexico. (With 



fig;ure.) Professor J. W. Rose. 205 



Cultural Dkpartment:— The Rock Garden T.D. Hatfield, 205 



About Tulips y. N. Gerard 20-j 



Narcissus Notes £. O. Orpet. 207 



Coreopsis gi-indifiora VV.N.Crai^. 208 



Dioncea muscipula M'tlliam Scott. 208 



Saponaria ocymoides. Fritillaria imperialis aureo-marginala G. W. O. 20S 



Correspondence : — Winter Storage tor Tender Evergreens. 



Fraticis Blake, E. O. O. 20S 



Wayside Shrubbery M. 209 



■ Rhododendrons in a Hard Winter H. H. Hitnne-ivell. 209 



Shy Wood Plants John Chajuberliii. 209 



R ecent Publications 209 



Notes 210 



Illustration : — A Klue Me.\ican Water-lily, Fig. 31 206 



Popular Books about Fli^wers. 



ONE of the noteworthy features of current popular 

 literature is the large number of publications on the 

 subject of our native wild flowers. Most of these books 

 have had a large sale, and the natural inference from this 

 would be that there is a growing interest in botanical 

 science. It is possible, however, that the plan of doling 

 out information in unrelated scraps and bits is not the true 

 way to impart scientific knowledge. The teacher who 

 does no more than fill ui> the minds of his pupils with frag- 

 ments of truth really renders him little assistance and may 

 inflict upon him a genuine injury. One who imagines that 

 he is improving his mind when he is simply memorizing 

 facts which others have discovered makes a fatal mistake. 

 The real educational advantage derived from the study of 

 a science is not so much the truth that is acquired as the 

 habits of personal and self-reliant observation which are 

 gained. Most of the books, however, to which we have 

 alluded make no pretense of being scientific. Indeed, it 

 is often announced as one of their conspicuous merits that 

 they are cumbered with no science and with as little scien- 

 tific language as possil)le. They set out with the assump- 

 tion that systematic botany is a forbidding subject, and 

 they aim. therefore, to impart information about plants in 

 an attractive way, and this apparently means in an unsys- 

 tematic and desultory way which is supposed to make 

 moderate demands on the attention of the reader. What 

 they propose primarily is to enable the reader to find the 

 name of a plant by some method which will not require 

 any effort. Sometimes the lists of Hovvers are arranged 

 according to their color, or again according to their season 

 of bloom, but they are never grouped or classified accord- 

 ing to their structural affinities, which would seem to be 

 the most natural way for people who have eyes and the 

 power of association and comparison. 



Two reasons are assigned for preparing treatises of this 

 sort. One is the notion, and a silly one it is, although it 

 has been put forward by men who ought to know better, 

 that scientific knowledge destroys all sentiment and poetic 

 feeling, and that the more one knows of the structure 

 and vital processes of plants the less he is alive to their 



beauty. If one should claim that an acquaintance with 

 geological science destroys all appreciation of the grandeur 

 of mountain scenery, and that a knowledge of astronomy 

 renders its possessor blind to the splendors of the starry 

 heavens, the natural reply would be that only those who 

 realize the vast periods of geologic time during which the 

 earth has been molded into its present form, and the illim- 

 itable space through which the heavenly bodies are wheel- 

 ing, as revealed by astronomical science, can receive any 

 adequate impression of the sublimity of the earth and skies. 

 Just so one who studies with microscopic care the structure 

 of a flower, with its adjustments and relationships, feels 

 more of its true poetry than the casual observer, who notes 

 only its exterior graces of form and color. The second rea- 

 son offered is that the scientific names of plants are repul- 

 sive, and that still more so are the names applied to their 

 different organs and the processes of their development. But, 

 as we have explained before, the difficulty in both cases is 

 exaggerated. The botanical names of plants, it is true, are 

 not always what they should be, but most of them mean 

 something, and, as a rule, they are as easy to acquire as the 

 common names, many of wdiich are applied to half a dozen 

 different species, while almost every ordinary plant has, at 

 least, as many common names. It is the universal testi- 

 mony of all who have made any serious study of botanical 

 science that these plant names are not half as formidable 

 as they seem, and that they invariably help, rather than 

 hinder. Of course, as soon as one examines a plant or 

 anything else carefully, and wishes to distinguish its various 

 parts, some name must be invented, and we must talk of 

 petals and pistils and stamens, and all the rest, as soon as 

 vi'e begin to separate the plant into its component parts. 

 As soon as we learn to distinguish things we must have 

 names to represent them, and it is impossible to write or 

 speak intelligently of plants without using new terms unless 

 we adopt clumsy circumlocutions. It is not objected to the 

 study of elementary arithmetic that a boy must learn the 

 meaning of dividend and subtrahend ; it is simply the ne- 

 cessity of supplying a word to represent accurately a new 

 idea. 



Now, it is not to be inferred from all this, that we object 

 to what is called the popularization of science. The real 

 danger from these books is that they have a tendency to 

 vitiate the popular idea of what real science is. One who 

 has been helped by the means of pictures and other assist- 

 ance to apply the proj^er names to one hundred and fifty 

 different plants has the advantage of just that amount of 

 mental furniture. When he hears one of these names he 

 knows what plant is referred to, and he is certainly better 

 off' than one who does not know this much, but, of course, 

 this knowledge gives him no title to the possession of any 

 real botanical science, and the danger is that young people 

 who are helped to such a trivial amount of information will 

 be prevented from an effort to acquire more, and will be 

 deprived of enjoying the fruits of genuine personal appli- 

 cation. It is quite as easy for young people to begin right. 

 It is not to be expected or hoped that many of them will 

 make any great progress in the intricacies of this science, 

 but, as far as they go, their knowledge can be accu- 

 rate and systematic, and the)' can have the advantage 

 of their training powers of attention and comparison. 

 They may get no farther than the very rudiments of the 

 science, but, as far as they go, it will be true science, and 

 they will have not only the" mental improvement, but the 

 sense of power as well as the pleasure which comes from 

 orderly study and tTie attainment of knowledge by the ex- 

 ercise of their proper faculties. What the student gains by 

 his o\\n\ investigation is not only useful knowledge, but it 

 helps him to acquire other knowledge. It is not the facts 

 that are so much needed by the student as the development 

 of the habit of systematic observation. 



The real woik of this kind must all be done by the stu- 

 dent, although, of course, this work will be much more 

 effective under the sympathetic guidance of a skilled in- 

 structor. Instead of waiting: till he can find a flower and 



