254 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 223. 



cemetery, even if his own taste is still crude, is likely to 

 cling, against the desires of his patrons, to traditional crudi- 

 ties, mistakes and abuses which largely increase the difiti- 

 culties of his task and force him to spend a great deal of 

 money to preserve his domain even in a tolerably neat 

 condition. 



There is only one serious fault which we find in any of 

 the addresses from which we have quoted. This is a fault 

 in expression, in terminology, rather than in idea. Never- 

 theless, so strong is the influence of terms upon thought, 

 that it may give rise to mistaken ideas in other minds. 

 The excellent address of Mr. Scott, of Chicago, in which he 

 pleaded the cause of natural beauty in the cemetery, was 

 unfortunately entitled "Nature versus Art," and was in 

 answer to the question, " Should not Cemeteries present 

 more of Nature and less of Art.?" Had "artificiality" 

 been substituted for "art" in these titles the subject would 

 have been more justly presented. What the speaker was 

 really pleading for was not nature, which means beauty 

 that man's hand has played no part in creating, but a kind 

 of art in which the leadings and teachings of nature's 

 types of beauty are discreetly follovired. A cemetery 

 planned and maintained as Mr. Scott would have it is a 

 true work of art. One that is badly designed, untidily 

 kept, and overcrowded with inappropriate monuments and 

 flower-beds, is not a work of art. It is an ugly, artificial, 

 inartistic thing. In condemning it and its customary con- 

 tents, Mr. Scott need not have protested, "Far be it from 

 me to condemn art " in its proper place. For he was really 

 pleading the cause of art while nominally pleading the 

 cause of nature. The fact that practical considerations 

 with regard to ease in labor and cheapness of methods 

 hargely entered into his considerations does not invalidate 

 is position as an advocate of true art. There are many 

 artistic enterprises in which practical considerations are 

 very important ; and, as in the case of the architect, for 

 example, he is the best artist who can to the best advan- 

 tage deal with questions of every-day convenience, cost of 

 construction, ease of maintenance and the like while work- 

 ing out with the highest taste and skill the artistic side of 

 his problem. 



A WRITER in Garienflora recently complained with bitter- 

 ness of the aspect of florists' shops in Berlin. Here in 

 America there is sometimes occasion for just complaint 

 that florists fail to secure the highest effect which an ar- 

 tistic arrangement of their stock might produce. But in 

 Berlin it seems that errors of commission are much more 

 distressing than the occasional errors of omission here. 

 For instance, the present fashion, says the writer in Garten- 

 flora, is to encircle all blossoming plants which are offered 

 for sale with cones of the most gaudily colored "calico- 

 paper," so that the plants themselves are almost concealed 

 from sight, and, of course, when they are visible, show to 

 the worst advantage. To this custom the writer attributes a 

 great recent decrease in the sale of potted-plants, although he 

 explains it by saying that it springs from the natural desire 

 of purchasers not to soil their hands and clothes by contact 

 with the pots. This explanation we may in turn explain 

 by saying that our practice of having all goods delivered 

 at our homes by the shop-keeper does not largely prevail 

 in Germany, where even the family marketing is usually 

 carried home by the house-wife or her servants. The writer 

 then says that, in another direction, good taste is increas- 

 ing, for the once beloved "mosaic bouquet" has given 

 place to what he calls the "true German bunch of flowers." 

 To an outsider it may seem that this new taste for naturally 

 cut flovi^ers may have been imported into Germany from 

 Paris or America. But, at all events, the Berlin ers might 

 learn from Paris to use sheets of pure white paper for en- 

 veloping flowering plants. Were the innumerable white 

 cones removed from the plants, which once a week 

 crowd the great steps surrounding the church of the 

 Madeleine, the gayety and beauty of one of the most charm- 

 ing scenes that Paris offers would be grievously impaired. 



The White Oak at Shandy Hall, Maryland. 



WE have already published several pictures of the 

 White Oak, but in order to give a complete idea of 

 any species it is necessary to study many specimens, both 

 in full foliage and in the virinter, when the absence of 

 leaves shows more clearly the texture of the bark and the 

 ramification of the branches. The White Oak, when it has 

 room for full development, is one of the noblest of our 

 deciduous trees, and the specimen which is illustrated on 

 page 259 is one of the comparatively few which have es- 

 caped the general destruction of the primeval forests in the 

 earlier-settled portions of the country. It is situated at 

 Shandy Hall, in Maryland, about eight miles below Havre 

 de Grace, on the mainland opposite Spesutite Island. 

 The tract of land which has borne the name of Shandy 

 Hall for several generations w^as taken up on the first set- 

 tlement of Harford County, and the original deeds, in the 

 possession of Mrs. Anna E. Barnard, bear the royal seals 

 and are dated 1640. The property has always remained 

 in the. possession of the Hall family, which is an unusual 

 thing in our country, where local attachment does not 

 seem to be developed as strongly as it is in the older coun- 

 tries of the world. That this tree is very old is plain not 

 only from its size, but from the fact that in a deed dated 

 1676 it is called the Big Spreading Oak, and a boundary 

 stone, which is alluded to in the deed as standing under 

 the tree, remains there still. Near the ground the trunk of 

 this tree measures thirty-six feet in circumference, and just 

 below the first limb it is twenty-two feet in circumference. 

 The spread of the branches is unusually large, and covers 

 a circle of 122^ feet in diameter. It is still in good 

 health, and seems sufficiently vigorous to last another 

 century at least. 



Mid-May in West Virginia. 



'"PHAT enchanting fortnight, when the fruit-trees seem to 

 -•• have foliage of flowers, is over now, and all the loveliness 

 of Apple-bloom is past. Here and there a massive, well- 

 rounded Horse-chestnut shows its great white clusters, and a 

 deep-red variety is very handsome. Horse-chestnuts seldom 

 combine effectively with other trees; they are best in iso- 

 lated positions or in clumps of three or four. The shade they 

 throw is so dense that grass does not flourish beneath them ; 

 it is well to take this fact into consideration when designing 

 the home-grounds, and not plant them too near the dwelling. 



The latest of the Amelanchiers is the variety Floribunda. 

 Tliis blooms about three weeks after the earlier Shad-bushes. 

 The petals of the small-flowered clusters are rounded, not 

 elongated like the other varieties, and the pink-tipped stamens 

 are very pretty ; but the plant lacks the fragile elegance of A. 

 Canadensis. It hassomewliat the appearance of a blossoming 

 Pear, except that the flowers are smaller, and it makes a pretty 

 little tree from ten to twenty feet in height. The bloom of 

 this variety is now fading. 



The flowers of the common Snowballs and the Japanese 

 Viburnum plicatum are gradually whitening under the warm 

 sunshine. Weigelas are opening their buds, and the day of the 

 flowering Dogwoods is nearly over. 



Coronilla Emerus, Cytisus purpureus and Caragana Cham- 

 lagu now represent the Pulse family in the shrubberies. The 

 Cytisus is quite covered with its papilionaceous blossoms of 

 pink and cream, and is an exceedingly pretty, small shrub; 

 useful for planting close to a piazza or on the outer margin of 

 slirubberies. Like Daphne Cneorum, one wants it close at 

 hand and apart from free-growing shrubs, which would rob it 

 of light and nourishment. It remains a long time in flower. 



Some upright or bush Honeysuckles are now flowering ; but 

 perhaps the queen of the shrubbery at present is Paul's beau- 

 tiful double variety of tlie Hawthorn, Crataegus Oxyacantha. 

 Its flowers look like small double roses, ot a rich carmine color, 

 and the tree seems perfectly healthy, free from insects, and a 

 more rapid grower than most Thorns. 



Last year, and the year before that, we found the first 

 rose on the third of May ; but the cold spring of this year 

 has retarded all vegetable growth, and it was not until May 

 i8lh tliat the first Cinnamon and Scotch Roses ventured to 

 disclose their beauty. A few more days of the warm sunshine 

 we are now having will transform the home-grounds into a 

 Rose-garden ; an Eden into which, alas ! the enemy will find 



