5i8 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 245. 



use through the saw-mills. The sweeping away of these 

 forests means irreparable loss to the people of New Hamp- 

 shire, and the desolation of its scenery will bring more se- 

 rious impoverishment to the state than the drying up of its 

 water-sources and the extinction of its timber-supply. 



Since these woodlands belong to private individuals 

 there is no legal means for arresting the destruction of the 

 mountain forests and the calamities which will surely fol- 

 low. The only way in which this scenery and the revenue 

 which comes to the state from it can be perpetuated seems 

 to be some reassertion by the state through legislative 

 enactment of its original control over these forests. We 

 are well a«'are of the obstacles in the way of a proceeding 

 which appears so unusual, although founded on principles 

 which are accepted without question as the basis of many 

 other laws and customs. We do not assume, therefore, 

 to urge upon the people of New Hampshire the adoption 

 of this policy, but we are sincerely gratified to learn that 

 a movement in favor of this e.vercise of the right of 

 eminent domain has been started in New Hampshire. 

 This makes a definite issue, a specific question to which 

 there is an affirmative and negative side. There is no 

 dispute about the present facts of the case. If there is no 

 check put upon the forest-destruction in that state, the 

 White Mountain region as a summer resort is doomed 

 more certainly than are the manufacturing interests along 

 the Merrimac. It is high time, therefore, tliat the people 

 of New Hampshire should face the situation, and make up 

 their minds what to do about it. 



IVIr. J. B. Harrison, the Secretary of the Forest Commis- 

 sion, is in the field, and has agreed to speak anyvi^here in 

 the state where a meeting can be arranged. All the intelli- 

 gence of New Hampshire ought to be enlisted in a discus- 

 sion of such moment. There is no village or school dis- 

 trict in the state which would not find it profitable to 

 organize a meeting to consider the responsibility of the 

 people of the state for the forests of the state. Every 

 newspaper should help to kindle popular interest in the 

 subject. Great changes ai^e in progress, and wise men 

 will adjust themselves to coming conditions. If, as it 

 would seem from articles which have recently appeared in 

 New England papers, the hotel-keepers and owners of 

 factories — that is, the men most immediately concerned in 

 this movement — are apathetic, it is time that the public 

 spirit of the whole people should be aroused. Nothing 

 but good can possibly come from a clear presentation of 

 the truth and a dispassionate argument upon the merits of 

 the proposed policy. 



Grottoes in France. 



AT a reunion of the Fine Arts societies of the various 

 departments of France, held in Paris during tlie 

 past summer, Monsieur de Montaiglon spoke of those 

 grottoes built with shells and irregular ornamental stones, 

 which were so much in vogue for the ornamentation of 

 gardens from the beginning of the sixteenth to the end of 

 the eighteenth century, and the humble successors of 

 which are found in the rockeries of the modern garden. 

 He cited especially the great grotto of the palace at Fon- 

 tainebleau, made in the time of Francois I., those which 

 Palissy erected for the Due de Montmorenci, and which, if 

 ever finished, were probably transported, the one to the 

 Chateau d'Ecouen, destroyed in the French Revolution, 

 and the other to Chantilly ; the one which was built in the 

 Tuileries gardens, in Paris, and the one at the Chateau 

 d'Anet, the materials of which must have been very diverse 

 and valuable, as when this place was likewise destroyed 

 during the Revolution, they were preserved and formed 

 the beginning of the national Museum of Natural History. 

 Furthermore, among historical grottoes, the speaker 

 named one constructed by the Cardinal of Lorraine at the 

 Chateau de Meudon, which was removed by the son of 

 Louis XIV. to make room for the construction of a new 

 building ; those at St. Germain belonging to the palace 



built by Henry IV. ; the one near the Menagerie at Ver- 

 sailles, and, also at Versailles, the one called the " Baths of 

 Thetis," constructed, it is said, to receive the groups which 

 afterward were used to ornament the " Baths of Apollo" ; 

 and those connected with the private apartments of the 

 king, of Mademoiselle de La Valliere and of Madame de 

 Montespan — all made at the same time and each costing the 

 same amount of money. Fouquet had a conspicuous 

 grotto on his famous estate at Vaux, made familiar by the 

 descriptions in Dumas' Vico7nte de Bragelowie ; Charles 

 Lebrun, the painter, had one at his country-house, and so 

 did Charles Perrault, the architect, at Mery-sur-Orge, and 

 this last still exists in excellent preservation. 



These are by no means all the grottoes which once were 

 famous in France, but the list is long enough to show how 

 fashionable they were. And their history and remains are 

 of especial interest, because, from the love of this rock and 

 shell work and of the irregularly decorative forms it im- 

 plies, it eventually affected French taste in general, and 

 brought about a revolution, not only in decorative but 

 also in architectural art. Every one knows the architec- 

 tural term "Rococo," and the nature of the art it charac- 

 terizes. But perhaps it is not so generally known that the 

 word comes from rocaille (rock-work), and that the form 

 of art it characterizes sprang from the same source. When 

 this fact is known, however, it is easily read in all the work 

 of the age of Louis XV., where unsymmetrical line, and 

 masses, and flowing ornaments of shell-like or sharply 

 pointed, but always irregular shape, mark every kind of 

 manufactured object, from house-fronts, doors, wall-deco- 

 rations and wrought-iron gates and railings to furniture, 

 table-china and silver, laces, dress-materials, jewelry and 

 every minor article upon which the designer of forms and 

 patterns worked. This is probably the onl)r instance in 

 which a general and radical revolution in taste, affecting 

 art from its highest to its humblest manifestations, origi- 

 nated in a special development of taste as regards the 

 ornamentation of gardens. 



Are American Varieties of Fruits Best Adapted to 

 American Conditions? 



THE following paper was read by Professor L. H. Bailey 

 before the American Horticultural Society at its meet- 

 ing last month in Chicago : 



Fruit-growers assume that the varieties which have origi- 

 nated in this country are better adapted to our soil, climate and 

 market than those imported from other countries. While the 

 presumption favors this idea, the proposition demands inves- 

 tigadon, and, if true, it should be capable of proof. It is ob- 

 vious that domestic varieties are best adapted to the demands 

 of our markets, because those seedlings which most nearly 

 meet these demands have been selected and propagated. The 

 commercial ideals are definiteand easily satisfied, and we need 

 not longer consider them here. But the adaptations to all 

 those various conditions and phenomena which we collectively 

 designate as climate, are obscure, and they have not been care- 

 fully studied ; and this relationship of American varieties to 

 American climate, so far as it concerns some of the general 

 adaptations of our fruits, is the particular subject of this paper. 



We can draw some useful conclusions from a comparison 

 of our native flora with that of Europe, whence most of our 

 foreign fruits are derived. With the exception of some arctic 

 and sub-arctic species, the plants of North America are singu- 

 larly distinct from the European plants, although much like 

 them. There are few species which are common to both con- 

 tinents. Most of the plants which were once thought to be the 

 same in both continents are now separated by botanists, and I 

 am convinced that this separation should proceed to nearly, if 

 not quite all, the remaining supposed identical species of the 

 temperate latitudes. The more closely we study these species 

 the greater the differences of habit and distribution appear to 

 be. All this proves that, while the European and North Ameri- 

 can floras had a common origin in circumpolar regions, the 

 present floras of the two continents have diverged, until nearly 

 or quite all the specific types in the central and southern areas 

 are dissimilar. This dissimilarity has been brought about by 

 the action of environments — largely of climate — in the two con- 

 tinents. In other words, the habitual dissimilarity of the floras 



