232 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 381. 



Some time ag-o we had occasion to comment on the Buf- 

 falo park reports, and these newspaper articles confirm 

 what we have said before. There is an insufficient force 

 of park police in that city, and the people have been allowed 

 to abuse their pleasure-grounds so long that they consider 

 any effort to curtail their privilege to injure the parks as an 

 infringement on their personal rights. They have kept 

 repeating to themselves the fallacious statement that the 

 parks belong to the people, and, therefore, the people have 

 a right to use them, when the proposition, accurately for- 

 mulated, would be this : all the people have a right to enjoy 

 the beauty of the parks, and, therefore, a few people have 

 a right to destroy this beauty. Fortunately, the adminis- 

 tration of parks in other cities was begun under better 

 auspices. In New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago and 

 San Francisco the people have been taught to appreciate 

 their parks as parks, and nowhere except in Buffalo has 

 any reputable organ of public opinion ventured to argue 

 that a park is essentially an open thoroughfare. A space 

 which people are invited to despoil is really no park in any 

 proper sense of the word. If public opinion has become 

 so demoralized in any city that proper regulations for main- 

 taining the landscape beauty of their parks are denounced 

 as tyrannous, such parks are doomed to desolation, and it 

 would be altogether more reasonable to sell the land for 

 building-lots than to allow it to become an eyesore. 



The Live Oak at Drayton Manor. 



THE illustration on page 235 is the reproduction of a 

 photograph of what, so far as we can judge from our 

 observations, is the most massive, symmetrical and impos- 

 ing tree in eastern North America. It is a Live Oak, 

 Quercus Virginiana, standing on one side of the entrance 

 to Drayton Manor House, on the Ashley River, near 

 Charleston, South Carolina. The home of the Drayton 

 family, a handsome red brick Elizabethan mansion, was 

 built while South Carolina was a British colony, and it is 

 said that the site of the house was selected on account of 

 this tree, although, as the Live Oak grows very rapidly, it 

 is not impossible that it was planted with its mate on the 

 other side of the drive, where the house was first built. At 

 the present time the short trunk girths twenty-three feet 

 four inches at the smallest place between the ground and 

 the branches, which spread one hundred and twenty-three 

 feet in one direction and one hundred and nineteen in the 

 other. This tree is growing over a bed of phosphate, and 

 the demands of trade will, therefore, probably cause its 

 death before its time. More than once we have visited 

 this tree, and each visit has increased our reverence for 

 nature as we stood in the presence of this wonderful ex- 

 pression of her power. 



Our illustration, for which we are indebted to Mr. 

 Hostie, of Charleston, gives a feeble and unsatisfactory 

 idea of this tree. Some one who sees the picture, how- 

 ever, may be moved to go and look at the original ; and 

 this traveler will be rewarded, for no one who has not seen 

 the Drayton Oak can form a true idea of the majestic beauty 

 of the Live Oak, the most beautiful of the fifty species of 

 Oaks which grow within the borders of the United States, 

 or of all that Nature in a supreme effort at tree-growing can 

 produce. 



The Wholesale Flower Markets of New York City. 



ASIDE from the great auction flower sales held two and 

 three times a week during spring and early sum- 

 mer, and the sales made by large growers to the local 

 dealers, there are two wholesale flower markets in this 

 city. The old-time stand on Vesey Street, abandoned to 

 fruit and vegetable dealers some twenty-five years ago, 

 was succeeded by the present market about the small 

 triangular park space at the Fludson River terminus of 

 Canal Street. When the flower growers combined to ask 

 the city authorities for the use of this place the open tract 



was a dumping -ground for cobblestones and other un- 

 sightly city belongings. Improvements were made a year 

 or two later, and at this season the little park, with its 

 shrubby background of flowering Wiegelia and Spiraea, 

 makes a pleasing foil to the garden-like beds of bright 

 flowers on its sidewalks. The second market, which is a 

 division of the Canal Street market, began four years ago, 

 and is better known to the public from its more central 

 location. It occupies the wide street space on the north 

 side of Union Square. In the misty morning twilight, the 

 tall modern business and publishing houses, grim and 

 silent, make a striking contrast to the bustle of flower-sell- 

 ing in the street, and their broken and irregular sky-line 

 suggests the medieval and scarcely more picturesque 

 house-tops of the buildings about a market place in the 

 heart of an old European city. 



Of these flower markets very little is known by the pub- 

 lic, for even the universal enjoyment afforded by great 

 masses of gay flowering plants, or the interest in the dis- 

 plays for their business or commercial value, is not suffi- 

 cient to bring out visitors to the early sales. During the 

 evening, flower-laden wagons start from the suburbs of 

 Jersey City, from West Hoboken, Staten Island and Long 

 Island, and by midnight the earliest comers have secured 

 first choice of location, the same place being held through- 

 out the season, if possible. The two markets differ but 

 little in the conduct of the sales. At the more central 

 stand, then, the black-covered wagons are headed to the 

 curbs. They are closely packed, the floor, two tiers, and 

 even the top increasing the carrying space. The noisy 

 rumble of the vehicles, as they come one by one, makes 

 part of the roar of early morning traffic, along with belated 

 trucks of jingling milk cans and the newspaper delivery 

 wagons hurrying to railroad stations. Unlike the oc- 

 casional early riser, who thinks bustle and noise a neces- 

 sary part of his unusual experience, and that folks who are 

 not awake should be, the men, wakeful and alert, noise- 

 lessly chat in pairs on the front seats or stand about in 

 groups, the midnight darkness relieved by electric lights. 

 Within Union Square the benches are closely occupied by 

 men who sit through the night, the humane police officer 

 explaining that they are allowed to wait on the seats pro- 

 vided they do not sleep. 



By three o'clock the activity and noise of arrivals is at 

 its height, and the busiest streets of many towns at mid- 

 day is outrivaled. Along with the latest loaded wagons 

 of the sellers come the first empty ones of buyers, and these 

 find places on the outskirts. Suddenly a movement extends 

 along the closely ranged line ; men, women and here and 

 there a sleepy-looking child hurriedly move wooden trays 

 filled with plants to the street space at the rear of their 

 wagons, until the long block is lined with two solid rows 

 of flowers fifteen or twenty feet wide, separated along the 

 middle by an open walk twelve feet broad. By half-past 

 three shrewd experienced men and women — the latter 

 generally short-skirted and blue-aproned Germans — are 

 peering through partial light and into deep shadows in 

 search of bargains and choice stock. Only two Italian 

 venders were noticed among the many customers. These 

 advance buyers are peddlers, owners of the low-sided, 

 open empty wagons, and eager to get stock, which is 

 quickly arranged at the end of the lines, in readiness to 

 offer to buyers in small lots at a slight advance. Later in 

 the day the remaining stock of these middle dealers is sold 

 in the tenement sections of the city and in the suburbs 

 along the Harlem and Hudson and in New Jersey towns 

 as far as twenty miles away. Some of the early buyers 

 come to secure plants ordered by them in advance for 

 customers who have engaged a special sort, and occasion- 

 ally there is eager rivalry and the excited claim that certain 

 stock has been "bestellt." Sturdy, thrifty women carry 

 away their purchases in large, flat baskets, one on each 

 arm, while a few push carts start off with their meagre 

 stock. One or two immense vans belonging to high-class 

 florists are closely packed with choice stock, bought up by 



