April 13, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



171 



ferent and more careless of personal safety and public 

 prosperity. We have long held the view that there can be 

 no protection for woodlands in thickly settled parts of the 

 country until the community is sufficiently educated about 

 the value of the forest to make possible the enforcement of 

 a law under which tovs^n officials chosen for the purpose 

 can have supervision and control over the manner and 

 time of setting- brush fires, and which should make it un- 

 lavi'ful for any man to build a fire in the open air until he 

 had obtained permission to do so. 



It is evident that the value of the forest is better under- 

 stood and more fully appreciated now than it was a few 

 years ago, although perhaps this hardly appears yet in any 

 perceptible diminution in the number of forest-fires. As a 

 people, however, we are very far from that degree of intel- 

 ligence and civilization which will permit interference with 

 our action on our own land, and until that time comes the 

 rural press cannot do the country better service than by 

 preaching caution in the building and care of fires in the 

 neighborhood of woodlands. 



Notes of a Summer Journey in Europe. — XI. 



FROM Copenhagen I went to Cassel by viBy of Hamburg, 

 and short stops were made at both places. 



In most of die German cities visited I was surprised to find 

 the Elm so little used as a shade-tree, but in Hamburg the Eng- 

 lish Elm (Ulmus campestris) is quite commonly planted, and 

 there are some fine avenues of it, forming beautiful gothic 

 arches over a number of streets. Very uniform rows of the 

 Linden (Tilia vulgaris) are also to be seen, all the trees 

 being of about the same size, at equal distances apart, and in 

 fine condition. The advantage of planting only one kind of 

 tree in a single line is well shown here, and, altogether, the 

 streets of this city are much better than the average in the 

 matter of shade. Sometimes the foliage of the Lindens, Maples 

 and Elms had a gray appearance, owing to attacks by little red 

 mites, and in a few cases the Lindens had lost many leaves 

 from this cause. 



The site of the old fortifications, extending in a semicircle 

 within a part of the city, forms a pleasant, though narrow, 

 park-like promenade and recreation-ground. Our common 

 Locust has been much planted here, and as it is free from the 

 attacks of the borers which specially trouble it in its native 

 land, it attains to fine proportions, some of the trees being 

 three feet in diameter. The White or Silver, the Ash-leaved 

 and the European Field Maples (Acer campestre) have all 

 attained tine size. A specimen of the Striped Maple (A. Penn- 

 sylvanicum) was noticed, which is grafted on the Sycamore 

 Maple (A. Pseudoplatanus) at five or six feet from the ground. 

 Both stock and cion have grown at about the same rate and 

 are now a foot in diameter ; but the difference in bark makes 

 the point of juncture very noticeable and forms an unpleasing 

 contrast. The borders of ponds and banks of the streams are 

 often made pretty and natural by grasses, reeds, shrubs and 

 overhanging trees. 



The Botanic Garden at Hamburg is arranged according to 

 Endlicher's system of classification. In some respects the col- 

 lections are not so interesting as those at Copenhagen, and at 

 the time of my visit (August isth) the garden had a somewhat 

 weedy and neglected appearance. It seemed odd to find the 

 Norway Spruce still labeled "Pinus Abies," and the European 

 Larch as "Pinus Larix." There are a number of good exam- 

 ples of American trees here, among them Taxodiums, Black 

 Oaks, Gymnocladus, Liriodendron and Magnolia acuminata. 



Perhaps the most interesting tree in the garden is a speci- 

 men of the so-called Byzantine Hazel (Corylus Colurna). Our 

 American Hazels are all mere shrubs, and we are apt to think 

 of all Hazels as little more than bushes. C. Colurna, how- 

 ever, becomes a tree, and the specimen in the Hamburg gar- 

 den is perhaps a fair example of what it may be at maturity. 

 This is a tree about sixty feet high, and with branches shading 

 a piece of ground forty-five or filty feet across. The trunk is 

 two and a half feet in diameter at three feet from the ground, 

 and it divides into three main limbs at five or six feet. The 

 branches diverge at a somewhat sharp angle, and the bark of 

 the trunk is gray and rough. It is a finely shaped tree with 

 rounded top, and at a little distance it has something of the 

 outline and aspect of a small-leaved Linden. Not much space 

 is given to greenhouses, and a Victoria regia house is consid- 

 ered the chief attraction. 



South of Hamburg the railroad to Cassel passes through the 

 great Liineburg Heath, a series of sands and bogs densely cov- 

 ered with a thick close growth of Heather (Calluna), which had 

 just come into good bloom at the time I passed tlirough, so 

 that the wastes were assuming a purple color. Enormous 

 quantities of Scotch Pine, some White Birch and Alder, and 

 also Norway Spruce, have been planted in various places, so 

 that the country wears less of a barren look than it once did. 



Probably no part of Germany possesses and shows such 

 favorable conditions for the growth of trees as Cassel and its 

 vicinity. The park known as the " Auegarten," said to have 

 been designed by Le Notre, the illustrious French landscape- 

 gardener, is regarded with feelings of pride by the present 

 generation of the citizens of Cassel. The trees have attained 

 splendid proportions, are in excellent health and vigor, and 

 are generally so planted and grouped as to give plenty of 

 chance for development, and at the same time leave openmgs 

 which afford many pretty and varying vistas. A better and 

 much more beautiful and picturesque treatment of the water 

 might easily be made, for the banks of the ponds are gen- 

 erally rather bare and uninteresting. 



This little park is less known than it deserves to be, and per- 

 haps this is in part due to the fact that the park, water-falls and 

 gardens of Wilhelmshoe are so near and are so much more 

 attractive to the popular mind. Wilhelmshoe, with its Her- 

 cules, its artificial water-falls, grottoes and fountains, presents 

 a striking contrast to the simplicity of the Muskau Park, which 

 has been already noticed ; and when the magnificent situation 

 of Wilhelmshoe is considered, it is easy to imagine how much 

 more might have been made of it in different hands and with 

 different ideas of landscape-design. The great cascade, nearly 

 a thousand feet in height, or rather in length, at a little dis- 

 tance, looks more than anything else like a gigantic stairway 

 built for the descent of Hercules, though it remains a mystery 

 how Hercules is to get down from his pedestal on the top of 

 the mountain. Leaving out these attractions, however, there 

 are many beautiful and picturesque stretches and vistas in 

 the park, where no offensive artificiality is apparent. There 

 is much quiet natural beauty in the woods of Wilhelmshoe, 

 and its handsome healthy trees have an attraction for every 

 one interested in dendrology. Before fairly entering the park, 

 on the way from Cassel, one is struck by the fine proportions 

 and vigor of the groups and specimens of Lindens, and for a 

 study of these trees there can be few better places. Tilia par- 

 vifolia and T. platyphyllos are the most abundant and furnish 

 the finest examples, but T. vulgaris and T. argentea are 

 also growing with them. The last was in full bloom (August 

 17th) and very fragrant, while the fruit of T. platyphyllos was 

 conspicuous by its large, full size. 



Within the park proper and on the lower part of the moun- 

 tain, the Silver Firs (Abies pectinata) and the Norway Spruces 

 form the finest and noblest examples of tree-growth to be seen 

 in the region. There are many fine groves and groups of 

 these, many individuals with trunks almost four feet in diam- 

 eter and perhaps a hundred and thirty feet in height. Some 

 very fair specimens of our White Spruce (Piceaalba) seem like 

 dwarfs beside the magnificent Norway Spruces, but the first 

 have only been planted about sixty years, whereas the others 

 have perhaps been grow.ing for two or three hundred years. 

 The Norway Spruces here do not give the impression of a 

 straggling or ugly habit, so much complained of in America 

 when the trees become old. Good specimens of the Red Cedar 

 (Juniperus Virginiana) have much of the aspect and are about 

 of the average size of those usually seen in New England. 

 Here we find large old specimens of the European White Birch 

 (Betula alba), with slender, string-like branchlets eight or ten 

 feet long depending perpendicularly from the branches. These 

 slender, drooping branchlets are a striking peculiarity of old 

 specimens of the Norway Spruce and of this Birch, a charac- 

 teristic rarely seen in our allied north-eastern American trees. 

 Many of our native trees and shrubs are to be found here, and 

 apparently nearly all such as are hardy grow with the same 

 luxuriance as the indigenous arborescent vegetation. The 

 coldest temperature here rarely, or almost never, touches zero 

 of Fahrenheit, and although Wilhelmshoe is situated at a 

 higher elevation than the city of Cassel, it is said to be liable 

 to less severe cold in winter. This is accounted for by the 

 presence of the surrounding woods and the open running 

 waters. A little tree rarely seen in cultivation, though early 

 introduced, is our Dwarf Chestnut, or Chinquapin (Castanea 

 pumila), which I found here twelve feet high and fruiting 

 freely. Such of our deciduous trees as the Striped Maple, 

 Common Catalpa, Willow Oak (Oiiercus Phellos), etc., are rep- 

 resented by very good mature specimens ; while Pinus pon- 

 derosa and other American conifers are large enough to bear 



