480 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 405. 



Francisco this season came from Porterville, Tulare County, 

 in the heart of this great valley. The orange season of South- 

 ern California is three or four weeks earlier than usual this 

 year, owing to the effects of the hot north winds. The fruit 

 promises to be unusually good in quality, and the yield one- 

 third larger than it was last year. 



String beans from Charleston have reached here frozen, and 

 were, of course, unmarketable, but the cooler weather has 

 generally stimulated the vegetable trade. Cucumbers are com- 

 ing from Florida and selT for sixty cents a dozen at retail. 

 Tomatoes from the same state cost twenty cents a pound ; 

 large, firm eggplants, the best seen here this season, can be 

 had for fifteen to twenty cents each ; new peppers bring fifty 

 cents adozen, peas$i.5o a peck, and the last okra of the sea- 

 son eighty cents a hundred. Tomatoes are coming also from 

 California in refrigerator cars. These are of superior quality, 

 well ripened and heavy, and readily command thirty cents a 

 pound at retail. Choice celery from Rochester costs $1.00 for 

 a dozen stalks, and New Jersey celery, in packages of four 

 stalks, eighteen cents. Sweet potatoes, from Vineland, sell for 

 thirty cents a half-peck ; cauliflower, from Long Island, at 

 twenty-five cents each ; and Jerusalem artichokes, from New 

 Jersey, at fifteen cents a quart. Cultivated mushrooms cost 

 $1.00 a pound, the season for the field crop having ended with 

 the arrival of cold weather. 



A few Easter Beurre pears were included in six car-loads of 

 fruit received here from California last week, grapes compris- 

 ing the main shipments. But, although the season for Cali- 

 fornia fruits is almost ended, the wholesale auction-houses are 

 even more busy now than during the summer months. At 

 the sale of a cargo from Jamaica one day last week, 7,000 

 packages of fruit were sold m an hour and ten minutes, and 

 $30,000 changed hands. The same firm during the entire 

 week disposed of 48,929 packages in auction sales, which oc- 

 cupied fourteen hours and a half, the sales aggregating nearly 

 $150,000. Jamaica oranges show a marked improvement in 

 quality and condition, and prices have advanced $2.00 a barrel. 

 Other fruits coming from the same island now are tangerines, 

 grape-fruit, shaddocks, many of which have a diameter of ten 

 inches or more, and bananas. The highest-grade oranges 

 have been selling for $6.50 a barrel, wholesale ; grape-fruit for 

 $8.50, and bananas for $1.22^ a bunch. The Keuka Lake dis- 

 trict is now supplying the best domestic grapes, and small 

 baskets of Niagaras are still occasionally seen for twenty-five 

 cents, Catawbas and Concords costing fifteen and twenty cents. 

 Strawberries from California, of fairly good quality, sell for 

 forty-five cents a box. 



Mr. Charles W. Garfield is the editor of an interesting de- 

 partment in the MicJiigan Cyclist called the Road and Roadside. 

 In a recent number of the paper iVIr. Garfield makes a strong 

 protest against the defacement of highways by advertising on 

 fences and buildings, or on trees and otlier natural objects. 

 He cites as an example a large rock by a wayside which had 

 long served as a landmark and came to be an object of his- 

 torical interest, while its striking form and the rich color of its 

 lichens have given pleasure to all who passed it. In an hour 

 the rock was scraped bare, and it was then covered with a 

 blaze of pigments to celebrate some man's baking powder or 

 pills or superior coffins. But, besides the defacement of 

 natural objects at prominent points like street crossings, large 

 signboards are now erected, on which space is sold to adver- 

 tisers, and these uncouth creations are not only direct blem- 

 ishes upon the landscape, but they shut out the beautiful 

 effects of the scenery beyond them. Mr. Garfield writes of a 

 beautiful turn in a highway about the bend of a small stream, 

 where from one point an interesting view of the water-border, 

 with its drooping shrubs and tracery of Ferns, could be seen 

 from the carriage. One day an immense sign was placed so 

 as to directly hide this view. It was placed there simply be- 

 cause it was in the direction where people loved to look, and 

 a maker of boots and shoes planted his business face where it 

 was an insult to every lover of nature who passed that way. 

 Certainly, this method of advertising is a llagrant abuse of the 

 rights of the people who drive or walk over the country high- 

 ways, since it deprives them of the quiet enjoyment of the 

 natural beauty wiiich is theirs by inheritance. 



In the death of Calvert Vaux, who was accidentally drowned 

 near this city last Wednesday, the profession of landscape art 

 in this country has suffered an almost irreparable loss. Born 

 in London almost seventy-one years ago, he had already 

 achieved distinction in his profession as an architect, when at 

 the age of twenty-four he accepted an invitation from Andrew 



J. Downing to come to this country as his business associate. 

 He had a talent for landscape-painting and an appreciative 

 love of scenery, which enabled him to combine effectually 

 natural objects and artificial structures. For several years the 

 two artists were successful colaborers in the field of landscape 

 art, and at the time of Downing's untimely death in 1854 they 

 were engaged in designing and constructing the grounds 

 about the Capitol and Smithsonian Institute, in Washington, 

 the most important work of the kind which had yet been at- 

 tempted in this country. Meanwhile, the gathering sentiment 

 in favor of spacious and accessible city parks which had found 

 expression in the eloquent letters of Downing at last secured, 

 through legislative action, the purchase for a public pleasure- 

 ground of the rectangular piece of land now known as Central 

 Park. In 1858 the cily authorities selected, out of thirty-three 

 designs offered in competition for the new park, the one 

 signed " Greensward," which was the joint work of Frederick 

 Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, and Central Park as we know 

 it to-day is the realization of this design in its essential fea- 

 tures. This was the earliest example in this country of a public 

 park conceived and treated as a consistent work of landscape 

 art, and the first attempt in any country to plan a spacious 

 pleasure-ground which should have the charm of simple 

 natural scenery while it met the requirements of complete 

 enclosure by a compactly built city. No one can read the 

 original plan as presented for competition without feel- 

 ing how thoroughly an experience of nearly forty years has 

 justified the forethought of tlie young artists, or without 

 a sense of gratitude to them that our first great park, which 

 has to such an extent furnished a stimulus and a standard to 

 other American cities for similar undertakings for all time to 

 come, was a work of such simplicity, dignity, refinement and 

 strength. It may be added that' this "Greensward" plan, 

 together with other reports on Central Park, on Morningside 

 and Riverside Parks of this city, on parks in Brooklyn, Albany, 

 Chicago, San Francisco and other cities, both in this country 

 and the Dominion of Canada, by the same authors, contain a 

 consistent body of doctrine relating to public pleasuregrounds, a 

 systematic theory of park art with illustrative examples which 

 is unique and invaluable. Mr. Vaux has been a member of 

 many important commissions, and he acted as landscape ad- 

 viser for the Niagara Falls Reservation, but for more than 

 thirty years his best work and thought has been steadily given 

 to this city, where, as landscape architect of the Depart- 

 ment of Parks, he has designed many minor parks and squares 

 as they have been acquired, and has completed the details of 

 the larger ones. He had the genuine creative faculty which 

 gave the stamp of originality to all his work, and a severity of 

 taste which preserved it from anything like eccentricity or 

 extravagance ; and while thus fully equipped on the artistic side 

 he had a fertility of resource and an unllagging industry 

 which enabled him to grapple successfully with all the com- 

 plicated practical problems of his profession. 



In private life Mr. Vaux was a man of singular modesty, 

 gentleness and sincerity, and while his learning and accom- 

 plishments gave him an assured posi (ion in the republic of letters 

 and of art, his kindly and unselfish disposition endeared him to 

 every one with whom he was closely associated. As a city 

 official he was a model of intelligent zeal and sturdy integrity, 

 and no man in public life was ever more loyal to his duty or 

 to his art. More than once, wlien some construction affecting 

 the design of the parks was undertaken against his advice, he 

 promptly resigned, but in every instance he was quickly rein- 

 stated in obedience to a vigorous demand of the people of the 

 city, who felt assured that while his counsel prevailed their 

 pleasure-grounds were safe. To Calvert Vaux, more than to 

 any other one man, this city owes a debt of gratitude for the 

 fact that Central Park, in spite of attacks on every side, has 

 been held so secure against harmful invasion and has been 

 developed so strictly on the lines of its original artistic con- 

 ception. 



A cablegram received in Boston last week announced the 

 death at Portsmouth, England, on the i8th instant, of Mr. C. L. At- 

 kinson, who for many years had charge of Mr. John L.Gardner's 

 estate in Brookline, Massachusetts, and was one of the best 

 known and most skillful gardeners that America has seen. 

 Not only was Mr. Atkinson a remarkably good gardener in all 

 branches of the profession, but he was a genial, generous and 

 intelligent man, full of interesting information about gardens 

 and gardening in this country and in his native England, 

 which in conversation he was always willing to impart in a 

 picturesque, and often highly entertaining, manner. An honor 

 to the profession, he will be missed and sincerely mourned by 

 his friends and associates in the neighborhood of Boston. 



