November g, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



531 



Good forestry takes landscape beauty into account, and 

 although it miglit seem ludici-ous to propose, in a poorly 

 populated district like Mount Desert, to thin out the rubbish 

 which is such an offence to the eye of one accustomed to 

 Swedish woods, yet at least the finest specimens might be 

 left and a few more of the indifferent trees taken instead. 



But the great end and aim of practical forestry is utility, 

 and in this respect there is much to astonish the for- 

 eigner in the state of things on the large, wooded island of 

 Mount Desert. We do not sweep our forests with a 

 broom, as some Americans believe, but we treat them as 

 we should any other valuable crop, trying to favor its growth 

 and not leaving it to tight unaided against its enemies. It 

 will not be long before America, at the pace she is going, 

 will have to give up the fiction of youth, which is now offered 

 as the excuse for all wastefulness, and begin to profit by the 

 experience of her elders, wh'o are bitterly ruing the day 

 when they squandered their patrimony of seemingly exhaust- 

 less woods. The forest on IVlount Desert seemed to me to 

 be just in that stage of secondary growth when interference 

 becomes imperative, both to preserve the fine trees and give 

 them the opportunities they deserve and to make a good 

 crop in the thickest places out of a poor one. Natural se- 

 lection would ultimately do the work, but who has time now- 

 adays to wait for the slow process of natural selection ? 



In the landscape-gardening here, good tendencies and suc- 

 cessful results are seen side by side with what must be called 

 perversity of taste. (lam not herespeakingof Bar Harbor, which 

 I did not happen to see.) Why spend untold gold in making and 

 keeping a lawn on this rockysoil when the unobtrusive shingle 

 houses, with their surroundings of bare rock and native 

 Spruce, have a fascination which no one can resist ? 



Of course, there is something to be said for the lawns, too, 

 as symbols of contrast, as a little glimpse of city, luxury for 

 those who care for that in the midst of this unkempt nature. 

 Only to make the contrast telling the lawns ought to be of the 

 most velvety and sparkling turf — ought to be framed in an im- 

 mediate setting of wild woods, or be set apart by enclosures 

 from the vulgarity of the semi-villages. Coarse villages are 

 here even more than elsewhere a very poor substitute for the 

 natural "wild garden" they have replaced, and the sight of 

 expensive lawns, on which the hose is constantly spurting, sur- 

 rounded by cheap houses and shops with plate-glass windows, 

 only suggests a needless and tasteless outlay of money ; and 

 this is vulgarity. 



However, I did see a few very successful combinations of 

 lawn and wild scenery, and one in particular. The house is 

 situated on a point at some distance from the main road, and 

 communicating with it by a long straight drive, with the low 

 brushwood on either side left quite wild except for a narrow 

 strip of turf along the drive. Spreading lawns, studded with 

 the beautiful natural evergreens of the region, surround the 

 house on every side. On the inland side these trees are made 

 to serve as a dark background for a set of bright flower-beds 

 fronting the main entrance ; on the piazza and sea-view side, 

 the lawn is kept clear, save for groups of graceful Larches, 

 Spruces and Pines that contrast effectively with the smooth 

 gleaming turf and merge insensibly into the wild strips of 

 wood left in places here and there. 



But the most charming creation had no lawn at all. It made 

 all the more impression on me for my coming on it one morn- 

 ing unawares after a week of perplexed wonder at the state of 

 the woods and the lack of taste and the absence of any unity 

 whatsoever in the arrangement, or non-arrangement, of the 

 summer settlements. I had been seeing not only unkempt 

 forests and human habitations grouped together in tfie 

 ugliest possible way ; I had also seen some splendidly 

 wooded rocky promontories, plunging their dark masses into 

 the clearest of tidal seas, and left imspoiled by the happy 

 mortals who had there set up their summer abode ; I had 

 seen superb, far-spreading views, and some very beautiful, 

 interesting and altogether satisfactory mountain-sides, which 

 might have been in Sweden except that the place of the Red 

 Oak, our pride and joy, was taken by White Pines and Pitch 

 Pines, and that Moose-wood, White Maple and Yellow Birch 

 mingled freely with the White Birches on the stony slopes. 

 Yet all these beauties of nature only made me feel more 

 keenly the mistakes in taste and want of care displayed, 

 and it was in this frame of mind that I came upon the little 

 "creation" aforementioned. It is a mere little log-hut or 

 lodge standing by itself in the woods on the slope of the 

 mountain of Asticon. It is dark brown in color, has a pic- 

 turesque gable with some carving, a high foundation, and a 

 raised, very effecdve, rough piazza along two sides of the 

 house. It was closed, and with a very formidable padlock, 



too, so I could prowl about freely. The site was exquisitely 

 chosen, giving a view from the piazza that seemed the very 

 essence of Asticon ; the peaceful harbor cradled by wooded hills 

 with the broad expanse of sea and islands beyond. The situa- 

 tion was full of the poetry of Waldeseinsamkeit, for which the 

 German has so many condensed expressions and the English 

 so few, and the whole place lying there silent, basked in (he 

 sun, among the mossy ledges and tall Arbor-vitse, somehow 

 like the wood-hut of The Three Bears. Very little had seem- 

 ingly been done to it, but a great deal of thought had been 

 put into it, and one litde touch of visible art went very far to- 

 ward deepening the charm. On the slope, in front of the 

 piazza-steps, there was a thick grove of tall Arbor-vitses. 

 Through these a passage, or tunnel, had been cut, accentu- 

 ated by a low stone wall, leading part of the way up toward 

 the piazza, the whole giving a faint suggestion of foreign lands 

 and conscious art, that only served to heighten the imaginative 

 charm of the place. 



Truly, the art of landscape-gardening does not always 

 consist in spending a lot of money in transforming nature. 

 New York. Cecilia Waern. 



Botanical Notes from Central Texas. 



THESE notes are written from the city of Lampasas, which 

 lies in the north-west angle made by the intersection of 

 the thirty-first parallel with ninety-eighth meridian. The city is 

 situated in the valley of Sulphur Creek, and is the capital of a 

 county of the same name. The creek takes its name from the 

 numerous sulphur springs which issue from its banker from near 

 them, and keep up its perennial supply of water. Within the 

 city limits there are two springs whose waters are so strongly 

 impregnated with sulphur as to leave incrustations of that 

 mineral upon the rocks and plants over which they flow. Each 

 of the springs is the source of a little brook. 



While Lampasas may be considered to be the base of these 

 observations, still many of them were made in Burnet County 

 and around the city of Llano. We are now in old Texas. The 

 western part of Burnet County and portions of Llano County 

 are very old — so old that they are considered to be synchro- 

 nous with the Iron Mountains of Missouri, the Black Hills of 

 Dacotah and the Laurentian Hills of Canada, and with them 

 stood out as solitary far-separated peaks above the primeval 

 sea long before the Rocky Mountains were upheaved. The 

 ninety-eighth meridian, more nearly than any other, is the 

 dividing line between the vegetation of eastern Texas and the 

 Mexican flora of its western border. It is largely the common 

 ground where adventurous species of both sections meet. 



The characteristic tree of this region, and the most valuable 

 one, is the well-known Pecan (Hicoria Pecan). When this 

 species lays itself out for a supreme effort it attains a much 

 larger size than its congeners, becoming a hundred feet tall 

 and four feet in diameter. An important and growing tcade 

 in pecan-nuts already adds millions of dollars to the wealth of 

 Texas farmers. A large tree under favorable conditions may 

 produce ten bushels of nuts in a year. Live Oak is, next to 

 Post Oak, the commonest Oak in central Texas. It also attains 

 a larger size than any other Oak attains here. A peculiarity of 

 this species is the formation of dense groves, " mottes," some- 

 times covering only a few rods, sometimes several acres of 

 the other naked prairie. I asked a native Texan for the origin 

 of these groves that form so distinctive a feature of the land- 

 scape of central Texas. He replied, " They come from the 

 roots of some old tree that is now dead and rotted away." 

 They may have come from the thousands of acorns which 

 some old now-gone tree had planted. Ouercus Durandii, O. 

 nigra, O. macrocarpa and O. coccinea are also here. Hack- 

 berry (Celtis) in several forms is common. Whether the 

 numerous forms under which it appears constitute a single 

 species or more than one is a question for systematists. If 

 there be more than one, there are probably four. Botanists 

 have nothing to do with making species. They have only to 

 learn, if possible, how many species Nature has made — ■ 

 whether one or a dozen of a genus they should not care. The 

 question then comes up. What is a species ? There the 

 trouble begins. It may be true that somedmes with too much 

 freedom we dignify slight variations of form in plants as varie- 

 fies, and couple too many specific names with the hybrid 

 symbol without having made one experiment to learn if the 

 united species would hybridize, or, if they will hybridize, that 

 the hybrid is like the form that we have found. It may also 

 be true that in our desire to do original work we have not 

 given sufficient prominence to the range of individual varia- 

 tion in plants— a variation that may fill the entire gap between 

 species without ever crossing the line that separates them. 



