December 



Garden and Forest. 



493 



GARDEN AND FOREST, 



rUliLISIIED WEEKLY 1!V 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Okfice ; Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by . , 





. . Professoi- C. 



S. Sargent. 



ENTERED 



AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE 



POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW 



YORK, 



WEDNESDAY, 



DECEMBER 



12, 1 888. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



t'ACE. 



EiJiroKiAi Akiici.es; — The Artistic Aspects of Trees. V. — Tlie Foix-sts of die 

 Wliite Mountains in Ditnj^er, — A Supplementary Volume to Bossier's 



^^ Flora Oricnlalis.'^ — A National System of Irrii^ation 4g3 



The Pines in Mid-November Mrs. Mary Trtat. 494 



Foreign Corresi'o.n'dence : — London I^ctter.. IV. IVatsoii. 495 



New ok Little Known Plants: — Berberis Frenionti (with illustration), 



Scrcno M'atson. 496 



Peiitsteinon rotundifolius C. G. Pringle. 496 



Coi/niRAL Department: — Mushrooms Win. Falconer. 497 



Fruits for Cold Climates /: H. Hoskins, M.D. 498 



Our Native Plums J. W'. Kerr. 49^1 



Orchid Notes F. Goldring. 49S 



A utiimn Flowers Ma.v Leichilni, 499 



Plant Notes : — Elreaj^nus longipes (with illustration) C. S- S. 499 



The Forest : — Forest Planting in Virfjinia 5uo 



Correspondence: — Horticultural Exhibitions 501 



Pilius sylvestris 502 



Recent Publications ■ 502 



Periodical Literature 502 



Recent Plant Portraits 503 



Notes 504 



Illustrations : — Berberis Fremont!, Fig. 77 497 



Elaeai^nus longipes. Fig. 78 499 



The Artistic Aspects of Trees. — V. 



THE knowledge we need to gain, if we are to utilize to 

 the best advantage such opportunities for planting as 

 present themselves to us, is not a mere knowledge of the 

 various forms and colors and te.xtures that we may find in 

 trees — it is a knowledge of trees themselves. Each species, 

 each variety, presents itself to us as a whole made up of 

 three blended elements, and it is the whole as such with 

 which we should strive to familiarize ourselves. We must 

 learn, not which tints or shapes in the abstract harmonize 

 with others, but which trees are, from the point of view of 

 beauty, fitting to associate with others. We must learn 

 how each one looks in all the stages of its growth, at vari- 

 ous seasons of the year, and under differing conditions of 

 light and shade, of nearness and remoteness. If a certain 

 tree seems out of place, we must be able to say not merely 

 vv'hy we think so, but what other tree might better have 

 been chosen. And when a spot is to be planted, we must 

 be able to picture to ourselves how it should be filled, not 

 in vague harmonies of abstract hues and shapes, but in 

 definite mental portraits of actual trees. 



Too often a much lower degree of knowledge than this 

 is thought all-sufficient. Too often it is supposed that 

 when one can recognize the trees he most commonly 

 meets and call them by name, he really knows them. But 

 he does not unless he can see them, so to speak, when he 

 does not see them — unless he can recall the elements which 

 make up their individuality and appreciate vividl)' their 

 special qualities. We all can recognize our friends wlien 

 we meet them. But something more than such knowledge 

 as this is needed by the painter when he wants to compose 

 a picture of many figures or to draw a face which shall 

 have a given expression ; and something more by the con- 

 noisseur, if he is properly to estimate and thoroughly to 

 enjoy the artist's work. And as the painter and the con- 

 noisseur study and assimilate all they see, so too should 

 the landscape gardener, and, no less, the lover of natui'e, if 

 he wants to understand and enjoy to the full all that is 

 offered him either in the unassisted work of nature, or in 

 that which nature and the landscape-gardener have pro- 

 duced in partnership. 



To study art as a preparation for the study and appre- 

 ciation of Nature may seem, at first thought, a reversal of 

 the right order of things. But it is in reality a wise course. 

 If an artist were never anything more than a mere recorder 

 of natural facts, a mere reporter in prosaic speech of things 

 actually seen in this spot or that, his results would still be 

 of service, enlarging our field of observation by the addi- 

 tion of his field and preserving for constant examination 

 effects which are transitory in nature. But a true artist is 

 something much more than this. He has at his command 

 the power to preserve general truth of effect, and yet ac- 

 centuate certain special truths more forcibly than, to our 

 eyes. Nature has presented them. This power of interpre- 

 tation in one man's work makes this thing more plain than 

 Nature made it ; in another man's it makes another thing 

 more plain, and in the combined work of all makes Nature, 

 as a whole, more plain, more vivid, more impressive. No 

 matter how carefully and patiently we may study Nature 

 in herself, we do not appreciate her to the full until we 

 know what the great artists of the world have seen in her 

 — how her forms, her te.xtures, her colors, have appeared 

 to eyes, tastes and feelings which by birth are clearer and 

 keener than those of the average man, and by incessant 

 training have been developed to a still higher degree of 

 power. 



In the study of form especially familiarity with landscape 

 painting is of infiinte value. Colors are so transmuted on 

 canvas, and their variability from hour to hour in Nature 

 is so different from their permanence in a picture, that to 

 know what they really mean in Nature we must study 

 them there. But forms are less variable in themselves, 

 and are transferred to canvas with less intermixture of hu- 

 man personalities ; and in no way can taste be so readily 

 cultivated with regard to them as by a study of good land- 

 scape painting. Here it is that the painter's poetic power 

 comes to help us — the power of idealization — of seizing 

 this or that idea of Nature and expressing it more perfectly 

 than, in this warring world, she herself is often able to ex- 

 press it. Colors so beautiful as those we find every day in 

 Nature we seldom see approached in paint ; but forms 

 more perfect than those we are apt to see alive we con- 

 stantly see on canvas. This is true even of the pictures of 

 to-day, when of all artistic qualities form is the least highly 

 valued ; and it is even truer of the pictures of elder genera- 

 tions. The great classic masters of landscape — Claude, 

 for instance, and Poussin and Ruysdael — are most valuable 

 to the student of form in Nature ; and, fortunately, their 

 works can be as profitably consulted from this point of 

 view in engraved productions as in their actual presence. 

 Of course, it is not as text-books that they can be con- 

 sulted, but as stimulants, as cultivators of the taste, as 

 teachers of the great lesson, what is meant by beautiful 

 forms, by satisfactory association of textures, by strong or 

 graceful. contours, by effective or subtile contrasts of light 

 and shadow, by variety in unity, by diversity in harmony, 

 by breadth, simplicity, repose and charm. These things 

 they teach — not just what or how to plant in any possible 

 given case : but these things we must learn in advance of 

 any planting if we are to make a work of art of the result. 



It is stated in the New Hampshire papers that prepara- 

 tions have been made to cut 6,000,000 feet of Spruce 

 lumber this winter from the forests which lie about the 

 base and cover the lower slopes of Mount Washington, the 

 most important and the most frequently visited of the New- 

 England mountains. Six million feet of lumber is not a 

 very large amount. It might be cut, if proper care was 

 taken in doing it, out of the White Mountain forests with- 

 out inflicting' upon them any serious injury, and without 

 in any way'impairing the value of the White Mountain 

 reo-ion as a reservoir of moisture, or as an agreeable and 

 health-giving summer-resort. But care never is taken, or 

 only very rarely, in- American wood-cutting operations, 

 and it is a foregone conclusion that in this case it will be 



