September i8, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



371 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Trieunh 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, SEPTEMBER 18, 1895. 

 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — A Great Battle Park 371 



Forests and Rivers , 371 



Cladnistis C. S. S. 372 



Notes on some Arborescent Willows of North America. — II... M. S. Bcbb. 372 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W, GoUring. 373 



New or Littlf,-known Plants :—Litsea geniculata. (With figure.) C. S. S. 374 



Plant Notes 375 



Cultural Department:— Native Composites % iV. Gerard. 376 



Chrysanthemums T. D. Hatfwld. 377 



The Grapes of the Year E. P. Powell. 377 



The Vegetable Garden R. A. 377 



Asparagus Sprenglei G. W. O. 378 



Variation in Corn, Native Plums, Age of Bordeaux Mixture, 



G. Harold Powell. 378 



Correspondence : — The Sacred Lotus in Egypt Anna Murray Vail. 378 



Air Drainage L. C. Corbett. 378 



Double Sweet Peas B. L. P. ^-jq 



Quercus Phellos X rubra in Missouri B. F. Bush. 379 



Rhus Poisoning R A. 379 



Recent Publications 379 



Notes 3S0 



Illustration : — Litsea geniculata. Fig. 52 375 



A Great Battle Park. 



THIS week will witness the dedication, with imposing- 

 ceremonies, of the great national park, which includes 

 the battlefield of Chickamauga, with parts of Missionary 

 Ridge, Lookout Mountain and other places made memo- 

 rable by that long struggle which, in the magnitude of the 

 forces engaged, the number of lives sacrificed and the impor- 

 tance of the results which depended upon it, ranks among 

 the great battles not only of our Civil War, but of the world. 

 The field of Chickamauga embraces fifteen square miles, 

 much of which is in forest, and, besides this, the Government 

 has acquired and improved in a most substantial manner 

 scores of miles of road by which the armies marched to the 

 field or left it. The city of Chattanooga, too, which, with its 

 surroundings, made one great battlefield, has made liberal 

 grants of land for the erection of monuments and built a 

 great central drive to the park, along Bragg's line of battle 

 on the crest of Missionary Ridge and through the field of 

 Chickamauga to a point twenty miles away. 



Of course, this is not intended as a pleasure-ground. 

 What has been attempted is a restoration of the country to 

 its condition at the time when the battles were fought, with 

 the placing of such monuments and tablets at critical points 

 as will indicate the battle lines and movements of the 

 various bodies of troops throughout the whole series of 

 engagements. Tall observation-towers are to be erected 

 from which the mountain ranges and the rivers can be seen 

 at a glance, so that the strategy of each army can be 

 studied and the history of every operation on these famous 

 fields can be accurately seen. When all is completed it 

 will be possible for the visitor to gain a clear idea of the 

 great military movements across the broad river, among 

 the forests and on the mountain sides. Nowhere else in 

 the world is there an object-lesson approaching this in mag- 

 nitude of completeness of treatment. 



In the current number of The Cenlury Magazine General 

 Boynton gives an admirably clear, though concise, account 

 of what has already been done and what it is proposed to 

 do. Commissioners are now at work defining the fighting 

 lines, and it is stated that io6 monuments and 150 granite 

 markers are to be finished and set up before the dedica- 

 tion, besides 129 of these memorials already in place. 



What we desire especially to call attention to here, how- 

 ever, is an editorial note in the same magazine in reference 

 to the service which art can render in celebrating the 

 heroes of those days of flame. Upon this hallowed ground 

 something more than historic accuracy is needed, and the 

 appeal to the imagination ought to be made as distinct and 

 powerful as possible. Of course, no art can make Lookout 

 Mountain or Missionary Ridge more impressive than they 

 are, but memorial structures can be erected here which will 

 distract the attention by their obtrusiveness, and if they 

 lack dignity or propriety they will help to belittle the legiti- 

 mate impressions which the spectacle ought to create. It 

 is truly said in the article alluded to that "there are few 

 pieces of good sculpture on the battlefield of Gettysburg 

 besides the beautiful and appropriate Celtic cross which 

 marks the position of the body of Irish troops. There are 

 a few unobtrusive pieces of natural rock which fittingly 

 express the willing sacrifice or unyielding valor, but, for 

 the most part, that beautiful chosen valley of the nation's 

 salvation has become, through lack of coordination in 

 plan and good taste in execution, an unsightly collection 

 of tombstones." As the fields of Antietam and Shiloh are 

 now coming under Government control, these great battle- 

 fields should not be allowed to become mere cemeteries, 

 and without a protest. To this end certain practical rules 

 are laid down which deserve careful consideration. These 

 are so sound and so judiciously set forth that we reproduce 

 them in full : 



1. Every commission should avail itself of the advice of the 

 best landscape-architects, so that park-like effects may be 

 attained as far as may be consonant with the more practical 

 objects of the reservation. 



2. Lines of battle should be marked clearly, but unpreten- 

 tiously, with a low uniform stone, and the whole plan should 

 be worked out artistically before large monuments are erected. 



3. The commission should have the advice of a competent 

 board of sculptors, and should be guided by them in the accep- 

 tance of plans for monuments. 



4. The monuments, to be of artistic excellence, must be few ; 

 and to this end the unit of celebration, so to speak, should be 

 the corps. The sense of historical perspective is lost by 

 allowing each regiment to determine the proportions and char- 

 acter of the memorial. 



One can hardly hope that the 385 monuments and 

 markers already, or soon to be, in place in Chickamauga 

 are all worthy of the heroic deeds they commemorate, and 

 it is not reassuring to be told that 3,500 acres of forest have 

 been cleared of underbrush and smaller timber so that 

 carriages may be driven through every portion of the park. 

 But every thoughtful person will approve the suggestion 

 that no work of this sort be done in future without " a severe 

 artistic supervision, such as made the Court of Honor of 

 the Columbian Exposition the admiration of the world." 



Forests and Rivers. 



ONE of the interesting papers read at the Forestry meet- 

 ing at Springfield, Massachusetts, was that of Mr. 

 C. C. Vermeule, consulting engineer of the Geological Sur- 

 vey of New Jersey, and it related to his investigations of 

 the water-supply resources of that state, an important mat- 

 ter, since considerably more than a hundred million gallons 

 of water are every day consumed by about a million in- 

 habitants. Mr. Vermeule made a personal study of certain 

 watersheds in New Jersey for four years, and, in addition 

 to his own data, he used for comparison a long series of 

 measurements of streams in New England and the middle 

 states. Taking evaporation to mean the difference between 

 the total rainfall and the total run-oft' of the streams, his 

 conclusions, briefly stated, are that the amount of rain evap- 

 orated was not proportioned to the total rainfall, as is often 

 assumed to be the case. Evaporation increased slightly 

 with increased rainfall, but very rapidly with increased 

 temperature of the atmosphere. The stream-flow was 

 found to depend upon the rainfall in connection with the 

 temperature, and little effect upon the run-oif"was traceable 



