482 



Garden and Forest. 



[December 5, 1888. 



THE list of the writings of the late Professor Asa Gray, 

 chronologically arranged by his associates, Professor 

 Goodale and Mr. Sereno Watson, have been reprinted, in 

 pamphlet form, from the American Journal of Science, in 

 which they formed the appendix to the thirty-sixth ^'ol- 

 ume. The long list, which occupies forty-one pages of the 

 Journal, is convenientl)^ divided into three series — the first 

 being devoted to " Scientific Works and Articles;" the sec- 

 ond to "Botanical Notices and Book Reviews," and the 

 third to " Biographical Sketches, Obituaries, Necrological 

 Notices," etc. Asa Gray was born in 1810, and his first 

 contribution to science was published in 1834, and, curi- 

 ously enough, was devoted to mineralogv, a subject in 

 which he was early interested, but soon abandoned 

 entirely. His publications, thus early begun, were con- 

 tinued almost up to the hour when he was struck down 

 with the illness which ended that long and brilliant 

 career, which is the pride and glory of every educated 

 American. 



In a period of fifty-three 5'ears, in 1839 only is there no 

 entry of a publication from his pen. The book notices and 

 reviews were begun in 1841 in the American Journal of 

 Science, with an account of a "Report on the Tea Plant in 

 Upper Assam," and were continued, uninterruptedly, with 

 the exception of the year 1851, until the winter of 1887. 

 Taken as a whole, they furnish the best account of the 

 history and development of the science of botany and of 

 botanical literature during this period which has ever been 

 written, just as the biographical sketches and necrological 

 notices, begun in 1842 in the American Journal of Science, 

 give the best account of the principal figures which 

 passed from the botanical stage during a period of great 

 botanical activity, in which Charles Darwin was changing 

 the whole current of scientific thought. 



The number of Professor Gray's publications, as dis- 

 played in this list, and the immense and varied field which 

 they cover, must appear stupendous, even to those persons 

 who M'ere best fitted by opportunity to judge of his vast 

 knowledge, his wonderful mental activity and surprising 

 industry; and the astonishment will be all the greater when 

 it is remembered that his vi'ork was of the very highest 

 class, and that it was coupled with constant and engross- 

 ing professorial and administrative duties. 



The value of the chronological list is greatly increased 

 by the addition of a very complete index, occupying no 

 less than twenty-five pages, of two columns each, pre- 

 pared by Mr. A. B. Seymour. The list, thus supplemented, 

 will be found invaluable by all working botanists, especially 

 those interested in American plants, but, unfortunately, 

 the papers to which it serves as a guide are widely 

 scattered in publications which are practically inac- 

 cessible to the ordinary student. The time, however, is 

 not, it is to be hoped, very far distant, when Professor 

 Gray's scattered papers, and especially the bibliographi- 

 cal ones, if they cannot all be republished, will be gath- 

 ered together and reproduced for the benefit of botanists. 



No more useful, appropriate or enduring monument, 

 with the single exception of a permanent endowment 

 for the support and increase of his vast herbarium — the 

 great controlling interest of his life — can be erected to the 

 memory of Asa Gray. 



A Park Commission of twenty-one members has been 

 formed at Rochester, New York. Among them we note 

 the names of the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese, 

 Doctor McQuaid, Mr. William Barry, of the Mount Hope 

 nurseries, and Mr. William Kimball, who has one of the 

 finest collections of Orchids in the world. The number 

 of commissioners is excessive, but the board has already 

 taken two steps from which we should infer that its work 

 would be unusually well done. First, it has elected as its 

 President an eminent physician and sanitarian, Dr. Edward 

 M. Moore, the President of the State Board of Health of 

 New York ; second, before acquiring any land it has 

 separately taken the professional advice of eight men of 



experience in the management of public parks — Mr. H. W. 

 S. Cleveland, of Minneapolis ; Mr. Calvert Vaux and Mr. 

 Samuel Parsons, Jr., of New York ; Mr. F. L. Olmsted and 

 Mr. J. C. Olmsted, of Brookline? Mr. William McMillan, of 

 Buffalo, and Mr. W. S. Edgerton, of Albany. It has oc- 

 casioned some surprise that each of these gentlemen, after 

 making the circuit of the city, should, without conference, 

 have fixed upon the same three localities as most desirable 

 to be secured for park purposes. One of these is a body 

 of high ground commanding a superb distant prospect, a 

 part of the site being a tract of land of fifty acres which 

 Messrs. Ellwanger & Barry, the well-known nurserymen, 

 have presented to the city ; another, a piece of the cele- 

 brated Genesee meadows above the city ; the third, a por- 

 tion of the great wooded gorge of the Genesee below the city. 



A French pomologist, Monsieur H. Beer, has estab- 

 lished at Louveciennes, not far from Paris, an experi- 

 mental fruit-garden, in which 4,000 Apple and Pear trees 

 have already been planted, among which are many Ameri- 

 can varieties scarcely known yet by name even in France, 

 but which are now to be tried upon a sufficient scale to 

 test satisfactorily their merits. With these Monsieur Beer 

 has imported from this country plants of some of the earliest 

 and best known varieties of French origin with the view 

 of determining whether these varieties have undergone 

 any change in the character of their fruit during the period 

 they have been subjected to the American climate and 

 to the American methods of cultivation. The result of this 

 experiment will be watched with much interest by pomol- 

 oo-ists here and abroad. 



Newport. — II. 



THERE is as much variety among the fences at Newport as 

 among the houses, and the fact is very conspicuous, as 

 properties are so small that one form of barrier is perpetually 

 giving place to another. It can hardly be said that a fence 

 which seems exactly rig-ht often appears ; sometimes it is too 

 pretentious, more often, perhaps, not dignified enough. In at 

 least one case we find a massive stone wall, some eight feet 

 in height, which would be admirable for the protection of a 

 lai'ge park, but seems out of place encircling a few acres in a 

 thickly built settlement, and sins against that neighborly fi-ee- 

 dom of prospect which is beauty's sole salvation in such a set- 

 tlement, and is generally preserved at Newport. And in many 

 cases we see, on the other hand, a cheap wooden paling, with- 

 out dignity or beauty, surrounding expensively kept grounds 

 and a'house of the most costly kind. But here and there 

 we find admirable devices. For one of the best we must 

 look again to Mr. Goelet's place, which has a very low, but 

 broad, stone wall, built of rather thin slabs of slate in a way 

 which hits just the right medium between over-precision and 

 carelessness. A rustic fence recently put up on Bellevue 

 Avenue is very well designed and pretty, but perhaps a little 

 too rural in effect for just this situation. Low brick walls are 

 sometimes used, but I saw hardly any which had the beauty 

 possible to this material. Hedges, and especially those of 

 Privet, grow luxuriantly at Newport, and are often employed. 

 Without exception they are well tended, but sometimes they 

 have lieen allowed to grow so thin that the eye can penetrate 

 them everywhere. No matter how neat a hedge may be, it is 

 certainly a failure when this is the case. 



With entrance-gates the case is the same ; sometimes they 

 are too mean in effect, sometimes self-assertive and showy 

 beyond all reason. Perhaps the most satisfactory is the fine, 

 tall gate, with wide, lateral wings, of wrought iron, which 

 admits to Mr. Van Alen's new house. It is of Spanish work- 

 manship, and, from the design, seems to date from the middle 

 of the last century; but fashions so often persisted in iron-work 

 after they had died out in architecture, that it is hard to feel 

 sure of its exact time. The pattern is at once strong and 

 very light, and the gate is just what it should be to stand at 

 Newport — very elegant, yet comparatively simple, and not at 

 all suggestive of mere display or of excessive powers of pro- 

 tectionr It is to be hoped that it may inspire others to em- 

 ploy this beautiful material. Iron-work as good as this in 

 design, and better in execution, can easily be obtained to-day 

 in America. Better in execution, I say, for last-century iron- 

 work is a combination of welded and riveted pieces, while our 

 best, like that of still earlier centuries abroad, is welded 



