lyo 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 216. 



in schools, where they should be encouraged. Just now, 

 when all nature is quickened with new life and when the 

 beauty and melody and fragrance of spring are appealing 

 to our awakened senses, every child is eager to respond to 

 the invitation from the woods and fields. The most fas- 

 cinating objects for study abound by every wayside and 

 in every thicket, and all the alert young faculties need is 

 proper direction and encouragement. 



A Japanese Garden. 



THERE have been many allusions in recent comments 

 on Japan to the picturesque gardens for which it is 

 distinguished, but, however clear a description may be, it 

 lacks something in definiteness, so that the illustration on 

 page 175 will be of use in helping our readers to form an 

 idea of one of the graceful and harmonious scenes that 

 the Japanese delight in contemplating. In summer, when 

 the sliding front of the house is rolled back, the master 

 sits where he can look out upon his little domain, and the 

 very decorations of his apartment are nicely calculated to 

 harmonize with the character of his garden. 



The picture gives us the situation of the buildings, and 

 shows the enclosing stone wall, surmounted by a fence of 

 plaster, with a battened coping of polished wood. Some- 

 times bamboo, interlaced in a pattern, is used for fences 

 with very agreeable effect, and again hedges of Camellias 

 are employed to enclose the grounds. 



In the garden represented, the surface is naturally irregu- 

 lar, but the rising ground in the rear is made more effective 

 by artificial mounds, which have been constructed to vary 

 the slope. A miniature lake, encircled by greensward, 

 and overarched by a light bridge of Bamboo-poles, is fed 

 by a cascade from the hill, shaded by Willows. Groups of 

 the red-flowering Azalea grow at its foot, with rushes and 

 aquatic plants. Volcanic rocks with encrusted surfaces 

 are here disposed to give wildness to the scene, and they 

 are also placed elsewhere about the grounds, or on the 

 borders of the sheet of water for ornament. Flat slate 

 stones are also scattered about the greensward, to serve 

 for paths, being found throughout Japan of convenient 

 size and shape for stepping-stones, for which they are used 

 everywhere. 



Climbing the elevations we came to a thatched pavilion, 

 from which there is an outlook upon the garden and upon 

 the distant prospect. Near this, on the right, is a group 

 of evergreens, and on the left we catch a glimpse of a little 

 thicket of Bamboo, and the broad leaves of a Magnolia, 

 the grassy slopes of the elevations being relieved by the 

 smaller mounds, which lead like foot-hills to the turfed 

 level below. 



Here are groups of deciduous trees, and mingled clumps 

 of Cypress and Cherry-trees in blossom, the white flow- 

 ers showing in masses against the dark evergreens. Near 

 the wall, in the foreground on the left, half-buried in 

 bushes, is a windowed summer-house, with a high fence 

 to insure privacy. This is hidden by an angle of the wall 

 from an arbor with an arched entrance, near which stands 

 one of the ornamental stone lamps with which the Japa- 

 nese are fond of adorning their pleasure-grounds. A shrub 

 in flower, probably the Hawthorn, grows beside the lamp, 

 and also a few dwarf Cypresses. The tall evergreens upon 

 the hill, and also those planted near the buildings as a 

 shelter and screen, are Cryptomerias, the largest and most 

 valuable cone-bearing trees of Japan. 



Without the garden is a graveled court, from which a 

 gate and flight of steps lead to the street, and in the corner 

 of this court-yard are a Plum-tree in full bloom, and two 

 Pine-trees, one of which is trained into a conventional 

 form, apparently to overshadow the door in the garden- 

 wall. Here we see the porch where the gate-keeper sits, 

 which affords an entrance to a long low building commu- 

 nicating with the women's quarters, the larger of the two 

 constructions being the dwelling of the master of the house. 



There is in this little garden into which the cottages 

 open an effect of harmony and repose. Proportion is well 

 considered, and grace of line prevails, with agreeable 

 masses of foliage where required. Though highly artificial, 

 the tiny pleasure-ground is so simple and quiet, there is 

 such a pleasant breadth about it that we gain an impres- 

 sion of space and dignity and suggestiveness that is often 

 lacking in a far more spacious demesne. It gives a hint 

 for a way of treating a large domain, where the miniature 

 landscape might be reproduced on a more imposing scale 

 with equal effectiveness, or it could be copied with advan- 

 tage in a suburban villa of limited space, or used to form 

 a surprise in some corner of a large estate. 



In the Japanese book from which this illustration is 

 drawn, are many other designs for the treatment of grounds 

 of greater or less extent, which are full of interest, as show- 

 ing the picturesqueness of the ideas of this artistic people 

 when applied to landscape-gardening. No matter how 

 small his enclosure, the gardener of Japan spares no pains 

 to make his plot of land suggestive as well as beautiful. 

 He will create in the sand of his back-yard a tiny Sierra, or 

 fashion the gravel, by bridges and mounds, and carefully 

 calculated strokings of the surface, into a suggestion of a 

 lake or river. There is apparently no limit to his imagina- 

 tion, and like a child he enjoys his toy and invests it with 

 whatever fancy pleases him. Thus through the mind he 

 gains a larger outlook, and of a trifle makes a semblance of 

 the universe, with that wise and gay philosophy which sup- 

 plies material lacks by pleasures of the imagination. This 

 cheerful gardener who, with fertile fancy, creates his own 

 paradise, has discovered the secret of content. 

 And having little, yet hath all. 



In the eastern and northern states the danger from fire 

 in woodlands is greater just at this time than at any other 

 period of the year. The snow has melted ; high winds 

 have dried the surface of the ground, which is often cov- 

 ered with fallen leaves or with long dry grass and weeds, 

 and the young growth of shrubs and other plants saturated 

 with water has not yet appeared to resist the spread of fire. 

 The conditions, therefore, are favorable for destructive 

 conflagrations. This is the season, too, of rural spring 

 cleaning ; on every farm, on every country estate and 

 villa lot, fires are kindled now to destroy leaves and brush, 

 dead wood, and all the other refuse material that has ac- 

 cumulated during the year. It is usually a season of great 

 atmospheric dryness and of high winds ; bonfires carelessly 

 lighted or carelessly tended escape control, reach meadows 

 covered with dry grasses or woods strewn with dried 

 leaves, and, soon getting beyond all control, spread to the 

 forest and sweep on until their progress is stopped by a 

 stream too broad to leap or until they are quenched by a 

 rain-storm. Tens of thousands of acres of forest-land are 

 burnt over every spring in the United States by fires started 

 on farms ; millions of dollars' worth of property is con- 

 sumed, and many families are rendered homeless. Dur- 

 ing the month of April it is not an uncommon thing in 

 some parts of the country to see the sun obscured for days 

 together by the smoke of these fires, and every year at this 

 time the columns of the daily journals are filled with ac- 

 counts of the suffering and the losses caused by them. 



It is necessary to build bonfires, although there are too 

 many of them, and a great deal of good plant-food goes 

 up in smoke in this country instead of being returned to 

 the soil, but the management of such fires should be given 

 to careful and responsible men ; they should not be built 

 when the wind is high or very near woods, or in long dry 

 grass. The centre of a plowed field is the best place for a 

 bonfire ; it should never under any circumstances be left 

 smoldering at night. This is a lesson we might have 

 learned from the Indians, for an Indian never left a fire 

 burning when he left his camp. The forest and the prairie 

 meant too much to him, and he took no risks which might 

 lead to their injury. His white successors are more indif- 



