338 



Garden and Forest. 



[September 12, 1888. 



THE price of White Pine stumpage has increased enor- 

 mously of late years — several hundred per cent, in some 

 instances, as the great forests of this tree approach nearer 

 and nearer to extermination ; but while the price of the 

 tinished lumber has also increased, it has not yet reached 

 the point which will exclude it from many of those uses 

 for which it was once almost exclusively employed in 

 this country. White pine lumber is high enough, how- 

 ever, to cause anxiety among lumbermen, and to compel 

 them to find some cheaper and more available material to 

 take its place. The most immediately available wood for 

 this purpose is yellow poplar, as the wood of the Tulip 

 tree is called commercially. It is light and soft, straight- 

 grained and easily worked ; it stands well, and when it is 

 not painted it turns with age to a deep rich color. Nash- 

 ville, in Tennessee, has always been the important manu- 

 facturing point for this lumber, as the Tulip tree is found 

 in its greatest perfection along the banks of the streams 

 which flow down the western slope of the Alleghany 

 Mountains ; and south of the Ohio and north of the Gulf 

 States it has ahva)^s been the best local building material. 

 The attention which is now paid to yellow poplar, how- 

 ever, is much more general, and the manufacturers 

 of this lumber are active in their efforts to secure logs 

 and regulate the price of the manufactured lumber. But 

 yellow poplar is not destined to play any very im- 

 portant or leading part in the lumber supply of the United 

 States, and the future of the business is hardly worth con- 

 sidering. The Tulip tree does not form forests by itself, and 

 is not even a considerable element in the forest anywhere. 

 The trees are often very large, but they are widely scat- 

 tered, and the most accessible have already been cut. 

 There are still great quantities, in the aggregate, of this 

 timber standing, but much of it is now almost too inac- 

 cessible for profitable manufacture. 



Bass-wood, or linden, a soft and easily worked wood, 

 which is found in considerable abundance in the extreme 

 Northern States, is now used to replace white pine in the 

 manufacture of mouldings and similar objects, for which 

 it is well suited. The quantity of bass-wood, hov\-ever, 

 is too small to make this tree reall)- important as a 

 factor of the national lumber supply. 



Much attention has been paid in late years, as has al- 

 ready been explained in these columns, to cottonwood, 

 southern cypress, and sweet gum as substitutes for 

 white pine. Sweet gum will probably be ver}'' largely 

 used before many years, and for some purposes, like 

 flooring strips, it will make an excellent substitute for 

 white pine. The supply, too, is large, and it is likely to 

 last, as the Gum tree grows on land which cannot be used 

 for agricultural purposes. 



But the real substitutes for white pine, or rather the only 

 trees now growing on this continent in sufficient quan- 

 tities ever to take its place, are the Long-leaved Pine of the 

 Southern States, and the Oregon Fir of Puget Sound. 

 These are the trees upon which the American people 

 will have to depend during the twentieth century, or un- 

 til they are exhausted or a new crop of White Pine grows 

 up in the Northern States and in Canada. 



Flowers in Japan. — I. 



THERE is no country in the world where flowers are 

 so universally beloved as in Japan. They are insepa- 

 rable from the life, art and literature of the people, and to 

 deprive the Japanese of their flowers would be to take the 

 sunshine out of their lives. They are enjoyed equally by 

 high and low. The richer classes, in the seclusion of their 

 well-kept gardens, can feast their eyes on the beautifiU, 

 while the poor have the benefit of the public parks, gar- 

 dens and flow,er-shows, and the poorest of the ]3oor devote 

 a few cents of their earnings to the gratification of their 

 taste. 



But in Japan, where everything is characterized by 



extreme simplicity, the people are consistent in caring 

 more for the beauty of individual flowers than for the 

 effect of large masses. The graceful and refined lines of 

 a few well arranged flowers and twigs are a never-ending 

 source of pleasure to them and no desire is shown to make 

 a vulgar display of great quantities of blossoms. The 

 art of flower-arrangement, which forms a part of the edu- 

 cation of girls of the upper classes, has simplicity for its 

 foundation. It is divided into a number of schools or 

 classes, and a long course of study is required before one 

 can become proficient in either of them. Nothing in the 

 arrangement of flowers is left to accident or to individ- 

 ual taste ; it is governed by rules as fixed as those which 

 govern music. 



A great variety of flowers follow in constant succession 

 through the different seasons. The snow has hardly dis- 

 appeared when the early Plum, the prime favorite of all, 

 bursts its buds and is hailed with welcome by the de- 

 lighted people as the first token of the coming spring. 

 Great gardens or groves of old gnarled, moss-covered Plum 

 trees abound in and about the cities, and thither in the ' 

 blooming season the people resort en masse, dressed in 

 holiday attire, to enjoy an aesthetic feast under the trees 

 and drink fragrant tea. Here they give vent to their de- 

 light by inscribing poetic sentiments, too brief, perhaps, to 

 be called poems, and hanging them on the branches of the 

 Plum trees. The Cherry blossoms follow the Plum in 

 quick succession before its latest-blooming varieties have 

 disappeared. The Cherry (Sakura), which almost rivals 

 the Plum in popularity, has many different varieties, sin- 

 gle and double, white and pink. But all these trees have 

 the same peculiarity — they bear no edible fruit. They are 

 planted for the flowers only, and so dense is the growth 

 of these, that they resemble great pink and white clouds 

 when seen from a distance. In Tokio the favorite resorts 

 for the people in Cherry blossom time are Umeno Park and 

 Mokojima, the latter being a road which runs along the 

 banks of the Sunida River. Great old Cherry trees line 

 both sides of this road for a distance of five miles, and the 

 branches, meeting overhead, form a perfect canopy of 

 dense blossoms. In the park at Umeno are many excep- 

 tionally large trees, some of a variety which resembles 

 the Weeping Willow in habit, and covered with innumera- 

 ble small pink flowers. Some of these trees are from four 

 to six feet in diameter. At all these resorts temporary 

 tea-houses or refreshment booths are erected. A favorite 

 beverage is Cherry tea, made from last year's blossoms 

 which have been dried and put away for the purpose. 



Among later flowers the Wistaria, Pgeony, Lotus, Azalea, 

 Iris and Chr3rsanthcmum are the chief favorites. The Wis- 

 taria is seen at its best at the celebrated temple-garden of 

 Kameido (Turtle Well) in Tokio. The place derives its 

 name from an old well over which is placed an immense 

 stone turtle. The Wistaria vines are very old and the 

 stems of some of them measure two feet in diameter, 

 while their racemes of flowers, when in greatest perfec- 

 tion, are from four to five feet in length. They are trained 

 over trellises on the borders of the lake, which is filled 

 with enormous golden carp that come to the surface at the 

 clapping of hands to be fed by the visitors. 



The Lotus grows naturally and abundantl}'' in all the 

 moats and ponds in and about Tokio and throughout cen- 

 tral and southern Japan. The leaves appear on the sur- 

 face of the water about the beginning of June, and grad- 

 ually rise until they stand from four to seven feet above 

 the surface, measuring from two to four feet in diameter. 

 The flowers appear about the beginning of August, and 

 continue throu.ghout the month. After the petals have 

 fallen the seed-pods continue to grow, and, while green, 

 form a favorite article of food, as do the long, white roots, 

 which are eaten as vegetables For Buddhists the Lotus 

 has a somewhat sacred character, anil it is often cultivated 

 in the ponds of the temple-gardens by the priests, who 

 use the flowers for altar decorations. Buddha himself is 

 generally represented seated on a Lotus flower, and it 



