502 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 243. 



natural accompaniment, extension and, so to speak, repetition 

 of the straight lings and symmetrical masses of a building. It 

 may be only a few rods square, or it may be as vast as the 

 park at Versailles. But, whatever its size, it cannot look well — 

 because it cannot look right and sensible — unless its formality 

 is e.xplained and justified by the presence of some structure 

 with which it is intimately connected. As the basins and 

 canals of the World's Fair are to-day, they are eminently beau- 

 tiful because eminently right. The eye understands at once 

 that they were planned as a means of approach to the magnifi- 

 cent structures which stand around tliem, and with which 

 their own magnificence, in size and adornment, is in perfect 

 keeping. But destroy the liuildings and tliey woukl lose their 

 purpose. They are not features which ought to exist by them- 

 selves, and they would not exist for the garden, should it be 

 established ; the garden would evidently exist for them. They 

 would have no adequate purpose, and, lacking this, they 

 would lose their artistic value and charm. If the great peri- 

 style at the lake-shore end of the basin could be preserved 

 with its flanking buildings, if a large but low structure for 

 some public use could replace the Administration Building, 

 and if a smaller structure could be placed at the southerly end 

 of the canal, which the entrance to the stock-yards now finishes 

 so finely, then indeed the treatment of the remainder of the 

 grounds might be carried out as the writer in the Hc-raM sug- 

 gests, with a good prospect of producing the finest formal 

 garden in the world. The finest, that is, in wliich avenues of 

 trees do not play a conspicuous part, for such avenues ought 

 not to be attempted where they cannot be perfectly developed, 

 and it seems improbable that such could be the case where 

 this part of the Fair now stands. 



If, then, Chicago is willing to build appropriate structures 

 around tliis basin and canals, the problem they offer will find 

 a delightful solution. But they would have to be built from 

 the ground up. The present ones, excepting the peristyle and 

 its flanking halls would not be appropriate ; and even if they 

 would, they could not be preserved, for their walls are of lath- 

 ing, not of solid brick, as are the necessarily fire-proof walls of 

 the Art Buildmg. 



The mention of this building brings a regretful thought. 

 For the purposes of the Fair its best place is its present place, 

 and if it is preserved, we could not, for its own sake, wish to 

 see it on a more beautiful site. But for the sake of tlie great 

 formal garden which might be created around the basin and 

 canals, one is tempted to wish that it had chanced to stand 

 where the Administration Building stands. Then, a formal 

 garden covering all this portion of the Fair-grounds would 

 indeed be appropriate ; and, especially if iVIr. McMonnies' 

 splendid foiuitain at the end of tlie Ijasin could likewise be re- 

 produced in marble, its general eiTect would indeed be one 

 which any city of the world might begrudge to Chicago. But 

 this is a dream impossible of realization. One can only hope 

 that Chicago may see its way clear to preserving the Art 

 Building where it is, and also to erecting other buildings which 

 will justify the preservation of the basin and canals, and their 

 inclusion in a great arcliitectural gardening scheme. 



Boston, Mass. ■^. 



[Whether or not great buildings are essential for formal 

 gardening it is not our purpose now to discuss, but sym- 

 metrical arrangements are, without doubt, useful and ap- 

 propriate wherever great crowds are to convene for any 

 purpose. This seems to justify the Mall in Central Park 

 and the Greeting in Franklin Park, Boston. We do not 

 think, however, that the design of the Fair-grounds would 

 justif}' any attempt to convert them hereafter into a formal 

 garden. In the first place, if an artist wished to design an 

 architectural garden with water in it he would very prob- 

 abl)'- select a different form from the water schetne in 

 Chicago, which relates to the great buildings about it, sup- 

 porting them, exhibiting them to better advantage, and 

 furnishing means of access to them. The basin with its 

 arms is reasonable now with the buildings about it, but, 

 no doubt, a hundred better plans could be devised if the 

 water was meant to be part of a great symmetrical garden. 



This makeshift propensity to force things to answer 

 some end for which they were not designed and for which 

 they are therefore but imperfectly adapted, seems to have 

 become one of the acquired vices of our national charac- 

 ter. Of course, it was natural, in so great a work as that 

 at Chicago, that this propensit)'' should manifest itself at 

 once, and the fact is that a hundred enterprising persons 



have set out to hunt up reasons and e.xcuses for making 

 the expediential and temporary structures of the Exposi- 

 tion to answer for some end which was not thought of 

 when they were designed, and for which they can by no 

 possibility be well adapted. 



Besides this frontier feeling which "guesses we can 

 manage to make it do," there is the thrifty suggestion that 

 it is a great waste of opportunity not to use this great basin 

 to some noble end. But the fact is that the walls of this 

 great basin, like all the other structures, and even the 

 grounds themselves, are of the most temporary character. 

 As Mr. Olmsted has well stated, what they have been 

 making in Chicago is a "camp" — a place to be occupied 

 for a brief period only — and their work is good or bad as it 

 is adapted to serve a definite purpose during that period, 

 and no more. The Art Building is exceptionally substan- 

 tial, but this is not so because it was meant to be fitted for 

 any more distant and lasting purpose than the other struc- 

 tures, but because no valuable pictures would have been 

 sent to a building which was not secure from injury by 

 fire, tornadoes, mobs or earthquakes. What has been said 

 of the temporary purpose of the structures in general ap- 

 plies with increased force to the canals, basins and terraces. 

 The surface staff is laid upon a wall of slender piles and 

 planking, which are only meant to be strong enough to 

 hold up the banks for a year. Not only will the staff be 

 peeling off and breaking soon after that, but the timbers 

 and planks will be springing out and giving way, and in a 

 few years natural forces will warp and crack and crumble 

 the walls, and begin the work of establishing an irregular, 

 meandering shore-line which is wholly agreeable as the 

 boundary of water-courses in a park when it is pre- 

 pared with a natural motive, but wholly unsuitable to an 

 architectural garden. 



Besides this, the apparent high ground of the Exposition 

 is in reality nothing but deceptive ridges which enclose 

 great craters now covered by buildings and terraces. 

 There is not an acre of ground now having an architectural 

 aspect upon which a piece of good permanent formal gar- 

 den could be made without great outlay for grading and 

 establishing fixed architectural conditions. Looking at the 

 Fair-grounds as a site for a great public park for Chicago in 

 future years it would be much cheaper to provide agreeable 

 natural scenery than to perpetuate the conditions now 

 seen on the grounds. — Ed.] 



In the Redwood Forest. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — The larger part of my summer vacation has been 

 spent camping in the Coast-range upon a tract of eighteen 

 hundred acres north of Russian River, reached by the North 

 Pacific Coast Railroad from San Fraticisco, a line that has 

 opened up some of the most attractive districts in California. 

 Tlie eighteen hundred acres, mostly covered by forest, are the 

 properly of William Montgomery, a well-known capitalist, and 

 has been kept with great care, so that it would be a i^leasure 

 to live there for months instead of for weeks. Redwood 

 groves, famous throughout California, occupy the "flats" 

 along Austin Creek, and lesser, but still remarkable, forests 

 fill the Ijranch cation. Along the eastern side of the tract the 

 Oak country begins ; toward the ocean the Redwood is more 

 mixed with Douglas Spruce, and the Tan-bark Oak (Ouercus 

 densiflora) attains a larger size. 



The atmosphere is dry and clear at this season, and the best 

 place to pitch a tent is often in the deepest recesses of the 

 forest, where only glimpses of the sky can be obtained. I had 

 long had an idea that the Redwood forests were too damp for 

 comfortable camping, and it may be so near the ocean, where 

 the fog rolls in, but on Austin Creek, at least, any person fit to 

 live outside of a hospital could make himself comfortable at 

 this season. An old sailor who lived in a small cabin in the 

 vicinity told me, however, that it "did rain awful every win- 

 ter." Late in the autumn, too, as I learn, the insect-life of the 

 forest is very annoying. Jul)' and August are almost free from 

 these pests if one does not camp in the Laurel-clumps, which 

 are said to swarm with various abominations. 



Besides the Redwoods, there are beautiful tall Maples by the 



