April 13, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



169 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by 



Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERKD AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICB AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGR. 



Editorial Articlrs : — Arbor Dav 169 



A Japanese Garden. (With figure.) .... 170 



The Danger of Fire in Woodlands 170 



Notes of a Summer Journey in Europe. — XI J. G. Jack, 1.T1 



Primitive Vegetables of Texas J. Reverchon, 172 



New or Little-known Plants: — New Orchids R. A. Rolfe. 172 



The Pepino. (With figure.) W. M. Mutison. 173 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter. W. Watson. 174 



Cultural Dspartmsnt : — A New' Disease of the Tomato E. G. Lodeinan. 175 



Fameuse and other Canadian Apples T. Sierry Hunt. 176 



Violets T.D. Hatfield. 176 



The Spring Garden '. J. N. G. 176 



The Water-garden IVm. Tricker. \-j-j 



Primula Sieboldi Charles H. Rea. 177 



Correspondence : — Mid-JVIarch in Northern California Carl Purdy . 177 



Notes on Grafting. — III A, W. Pearson. 17S 



Impressions of Leaves Hugh D. Vail, 179 



Recent Publications 179 



Notes 180 



Illustrations : — The Pepino, Solanum muricatum, in fruit, Fig. 26 173 



A Japanese Garden, Fig. 27 175 



Arbor Day. 



DURING the past month we have received several re- 

 minders of the approach of Arbor Day in the way of 

 circulars and pamphlets sugg-esting proper exercises for the 

 ceremonial observance of that festival. They are gen- 

 erally issued by the State Superintendents of Public Schools, 

 and contain a good deal of music and poetry, with selec- 

 tions in prose and verse suitable for recitation. Every 

 effort to make this celebration an attractive one is praise- 

 worthy, but in addition to the songs and orations we should 

 like to see in these programmes greater effort to instruct 

 the young people in some of the advantages and uses of 

 trees, some of the fundamental facts relating to their 

 growth and structure, and particularly some explicit direc- 

 tions as to planting them and caring for them afterward. 

 Arbor Day is intended to encourage tree-planting. Its 

 highest use is only reached when children, and their 

 parents, too, are moved to plant the best trees in the best 

 way. It requires no great amount of intelligence to thrust 

 the roots of a tree into a hole in the ground ; but to plant a 

 tree as it should be planted — that is, to plant it so that it is 

 likely to attain its best possible development and reach a 

 green old age — is a work that requires care and skill. There 

 are few things which men do where the difference between 

 careless work and good work will show so plainly, or for 

 so long a time, as in the planting of a tree. In the first 

 place, the site for planting should be intelligently chosen, 

 then the variety suited to the peculiar soil and situation 

 and use for which it is intended should be considered. A 

 good specimen of this particular tree should be selected 

 and the ground should be thoroughly prepared to receive 

 it. Even then, after the soil is properly firmed about its 

 roots, the tree should not be neglected and suffered to fall 

 a prey to insects or fungi, or allowed to starve for lack of 

 food or water, or to be loosened by the wind. 

 One of the most instructive exercises of Arbor Day in 



every district where the day was celebrated last year, or in 

 the years before, would be an examination by the children 

 of the trees which had previously been set out, to see what 

 proportion of them were thrifty and had made as good a 

 growth as could have been expected. Professor Beal once 

 related a very instructive incident in these pages. A few 

 years ago each class and society of the Michigan Agricul- 

 tural College planted a memorial tree with some ceremony. 

 These trees were publicly accepted by the President, and the 

 care of them was guaranteed. A year later reports were 

 made which proved how much easier it is to plant a tree 

 than it is to give it proper care afterward. Of the twelve 

 trees not one had made satisfactory growth, none had been 

 mulched, only one had received any cultivation, one was 

 dead, two nearly dead, one had been cut down, and nearly 

 all the rest of them were having a severe struggle with thin 

 soil, grass, weeds, lack of moisture and insects and fungi. 



It is a beautiful custom — this planting of memorial trees — 

 but in order to make it impressive the trees must live to 

 vigorous and venerable old age. A memorial tree of feeble 

 growth and early decrepitude only serves to remind us that 

 it was originally a bad specimen or that it had been badly 

 planted or badly cared for. No excuse can ever be given for 

 planting a tree carelessly or improperly. There may be par- 

 ticular reasons for planting trees closely together, as, for in- 

 stance, vi'here a rapid upward growth is desired, but for 

 memorial trees ample room is needed. A melancholy ex- 

 ample of improper planting in this regard is furnished by 

 the so-called Hamilton trees on Washington Heights, in 

 this city, about which there is so much sentimental dis- 

 cussion in the papers just now. These are thirteen Liquid- 

 ambar-trees, said to have been planted by Alexander Ham- 

 ilton to commemorate the original states of the Union. In 

 Harper s Young People, last week, there is a good illustra- 

 tion of these trees, and it will be seen that they form a 

 dense clump, standing within an area not more than fifteen 

 feet square, where they could not possibly make a healthy 

 growth. Old as they are, several of these trees are so 

 choked and crowded that their trunks are scarcely eight 

 inches in diameter, although the largest ones are two feet in 

 diameter. None of them, however, has anything like a 

 symmetrical development, and an examination of their tops 

 shows much dead wood in all of them. If Alexander Ham- 

 ilton or some one else had planted one tree in this spot 

 where thirteen now stand, it would have cast a larger 

 shadow than all of them together now do, and instead of 

 being sickly and moribund it would now be giving promise 

 of another century of vigorous life. 



It is outside of our purpose to repeat here the elementary 

 rules for planting trees and for protecting them. What we 

 wish to insist on is that attention to the trees themselves 

 is the matter of paramount importance, while talking and 

 singing of them are of temporary and comparatively trivial 

 moment. Even under the best auspices one day in a year 

 devoted to trees will count for very little. The real advan- 

 tage from the observance of Arbor Day comes where it is 

 made a pleasing incident in a perennial and ever-growing 

 interest in the study of natural objects. Some of the state 

 horticultural societies have done very wisely in offering 

 to furnish seed and plants under certain restrictions to dis- 

 trict schools, in order to encourage the cultivation of flow- 

 ers and shrubs on school-grounds. Others have offered to 

 school-children prizes for collections of wild flowers and for 

 classified lists of the birds and insects found in their districts. 

 In an Arbor-day circular from Wisconsin we find directions 

 for making and keeping alawn, which is an admirable idea 

 where the grounds are so large that the whole area is not re- 

 quired for a playground. The essential point is to encour- 

 age among school-children a personal interest in trees and 

 shrubs, not simply for their use in making the school- 

 grounds an attractive place, but for the development of 

 habits of observation, which is of itself a liberal education. 

 The habits of investigation which distinguish a man of 

 science from his fellows are the very ones which are natu- 

 ral to young children, and which are too often repressed 



