362 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 394. 



they do not entrust the work to artists of the first rank. 

 Boston has wisely engaged Mr. Ohnsted to design her 

 pubHc parks. Why not consult an artist of equal rank to 

 furnish some permanent scheme for treating her Public 

 Garden .? Men entrusted with the expenditure of the 

 people's money should aim to improve the public taste, if 

 it is bad, rather than pander to it. 



We are by no means convinced, however, that a ma- 

 jority of the common people, whoever they may be, 

 approve this kind of gardening. There is nothing more 

 snobbish or vulgar than the notion that the best art is be- 

 yond the appreciation of the great bulk of the people. 

 They like good architecture, good pictures, good music, 

 and whenever they have the opportunity to admire a good 

 garden they show their appreciation of it. When Boston 

 was full of delegates to the Christian Endeavor Convention 

 the Public Garden was thronged, as a matter of course, with 

 strangers, who inspected with interest the reproduction of 

 their emblems on the grass. It is probable that they would 

 have had greater admiration for an honest effort at a gen- 

 uine garden. Many of them have taken pains to assure us 

 of this fact by letter, and one lady expressed her bitter dis- 

 appointment at finding "floral fashions in Boston which 

 would not be tolerated " in the Kansas town where her 

 home is. Really, the bulk of our people despise shams and 

 artifice more and more. No one now thinks of sending to 

 a lady a heart constructed of white carnations and pierced 

 with an arrow of crimson ones. Floral designs imitating fid- 

 dlesandbells and pieces of furniture have given place tosim- 

 pler arrangements of more harmonious color. The same 

 change is coming in the treatment of our pleasure-grounds. 

 The picture of four men of life-size rowing in a boat will 

 not again be seen spread out in gaudy colors on the turf of 

 any American park, and it is to be hoped that the famous 

 American Eagle with a glass eye, and the Gates Ajar, con- 

 structed with bits of blue stone to furnish a detail when 

 flowers of that color were not at hand, have both passed 

 away forever. 



The English Oak. 



OF course there is a great diversity of size and habit in 

 the fifty species of Oak which grow in the United 

 States, and several of them rank among the most dignified 

 and majestic of our native trees. The best of them require 

 centuries of growth before they attain their noblest expres- 

 sion, so that it is true, as has been stated, that very few 

 Americans have ever seen a White Oak in its full expan- 

 sion grown to maturity in the open ground. The differ- 

 ence in character between what Gilpin styles "an insulated 

 Oak which has developed without any lateral pressure" 

 and one which has struggled sturdily upward among other 

 trees in the forests is very marked. There are Live Oaks 

 in the south which have had free chance to show what they 

 can do when they had an opportunity to reach outward as 

 well as upward, and we have already expressed the opinion 

 that one of these trees at Drayton Manor, on the Ashley 

 River, South Carolina, is the most massive, symmetrical 

 and imposing tree in eastern North America. The com- 

 mon British or Royal Oak resembles our White Oak in 

 habit of growth, and many of these trees are to be found 

 in parks and open forests of England, where they have 

 been undisturbed since the time of the Druids, and their 

 sturdy trunks, wide-spreading branches and venerable age 

 make them the most impressive features of the scenery, so 

 that it is little wonder that they are regarded with a feeling 

 akin to reverence. The illustration on page 365 shows 

 a group of these trees, with the usual undergrowtli of 

 Ferns, in Sherwood Forest, which has been a royal hunt- 

 ing-ground from time immemorial, famed in romance as 

 the home of Robin Hood, and noted for such historic trees 

 as the Parliament Oak, the Major Oak, the Shire Oak and 

 other celebrated specimens. These Oaks were quite as 

 eminent for the soundness and quality of their timber as 

 for their majestic appearance, and many of the b(;st of 

 them have been cut for use in public buildings. There 



is still in existence an autograph letter of Sir Christopher 

 Wren to the Duke of Newcastle, in which he acknowledges 

 the grant of certain trees from this forest to be used for 

 rebuilding St. Paul's Cathedral after the great fire in Lon- 

 don : "Wee must accept," writes Sir Christopher, "this sea- 

 son but ten of the great trees, and I presume once more to 

 acquaint you with the scantlings of the great Beames to 

 prevent mistake, to wit : forty-seven feet long and thirteen 

 by fourteen inches wide at the small end, growing timber, 

 this scantling to hold die square as neer as can be without 

 sap." When we remember the amount of oak timber that 

 has been used for British navies and for other construction, 

 it is a marvel that so many of the oldest and finest trees 

 remain in this forest unscathed, except by time. 



While the English Oak is one of the noblest of trees in 

 its native land, like many other trees from across the 

 Atlantic, it does not succeed as well here, so that both 

 from an economical or an ornamental point of view it is 

 not as well worth planting as many of our native species. 

 The ordinary variety of the British Oak, Quercus peduncu- 

 lata, is a variable tree, and it has been cultivated so long that 

 numerous quite distinct forms have been established. There 

 are forty-five of these varieties in Kew Gardens, and some of 

 these, like the Pyramidal Oak, for example, seem to thrive 

 better here than the type. Since the climate of our Pacific 

 coast resembles that of England more closely than our own, 

 it is not improbable that the British Oak may make itself at 

 home there. Some experiments made Ijy Professor Hil- 

 gard a few years ago seem to show that they are likely to 

 endure the severe droughts of a California summer, and 

 presumably they will find more favorable conditions in 

 Oregon and Washington. If this is true, this Oak will make 

 a valuable addition to the timber-trees of that region where 

 hardwoods are rare. 



The Pines iix a Dry Summer, 



THEintenseheat anddrought of the past two months has 

 driven collectors and students of plants in the Pines to 

 out-of-the-way nooks in damp places, while the usual quota 

 of plants is found in the ponds and marshes. One of our 

 best collectors of flovi'ering plants, and of material for the 

 microscope, is a Japanese who joined our class a year ago. 

 But for his enthusiasm I fear our weekly meetings would 

 languish for lack of analytic material. 



Among the plants now in bloom is Ludwigia alternifolia ; 

 growing in swampy places, its bright yellow flowers in the 

 upper axils appear all summer. The roundish seed-pods 

 are filled with tiny seeds, which, when ripe, can be 

 sprinkled from a round hole in the top, as from a miniature 

 pepper-box. L. hirtella is like L. alternifolia, except that 

 the seed-pods of this species are not wing-angled and the 

 roots are tuberous. Decodon verticillatus is quite a hand- 

 some plant, growing sometimes in rather deep water, with 

 wand-like stems from six to eight feet in length, and clus- 

 ters of pinkish-purple flowers in the axils of the upper 

 leaves. In company with these Loosestrifes we find both 

 species of the nearly related Meadow Beauty, Rhexia 'Vir- 

 ginica and R. Mariana, in full bloom. There are so many 

 attractive features about these plants that one never ceases 

 to admire them. If we open the flower-bud we find eight 

 long golden anthers inverted and closely packed around 

 the pistil ; as the flower expands they rise and take their 

 places jauntily in a horizontal position on top of the fila- 

 ments. The urn-shaped seed-pods, too, are ornamental, and 

 the seeds are coiled like snail-shells. All the minor details, 

 like the bristly hairs on the leaves and the small spur at 

 the attachment of the anthers, are wonderfully attractive 

 under a low power of the microscope. 



Two or three species of Hydrocotyle are trailing along 

 in the moist places. Some of the plants are growing in 

 water along the edge of the pond, while others are on 

 comparatively dr}!- ground. The umbels of small white 

 flowers are on long peduncles, and often these umbels are 

 one above the other, sometimes to the number of three or 

 four. H. umbellata has round shield-shaped leaves, and 



