April 21, 1S97.] 



Garden and Forest. 



151 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tkibune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — The Care of Park Trees 151 



A Garden for Children 151 



Notes on the Pine Forests of Southern and Central Arizona, 



Professor f. IV. Tourney. 152 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 153 



Entomological : — An Enemy of Narcissus and Amaryllis. (With figure ) 



' 7. G. Jack. 154 



Cultural Department : — Seasonable Notes IV. JV. Craig. 156 



Some Cool-house Shrubs IV. H. Taplin. 156 



Erythronium srrandiflorum and Related Species Carl Purdy. 157 



Lilium Harrisii and the Electric Light i". 157 



Sternbergia Fischeriana J. N. G. 157 



Carnations, Calla Elliottiana T. D. Hatfield. 158 



Correspondence : — Notes from Cornell University A. B. C. 158 



An Orchid Scale, Aspidiotus bifonnis Professor T. D. A. Cockerell. 158 



Plants at Wellesley T D. Hatfield. 158 



Notes from Germantown Joseph Meehan. 159 



Recent Publications 159 



Notes 160 



Illustration : — Merodon equestris, a Narcissus pest, Fig. 18 155 



The Care of Park Trees. 



WANT of technical knowledge makes it easy, ap- 

 parently, to discuss in print the complex and 

 often difficult conditions which affect trees in urban parks, 

 and makes their critics peculiarly eager to blame park- 

 managers when they attempt to improve park plantations 

 by necessary thinnings. Ill-advised protests against cutting 

 trees menace the beauty and usefulness of every American 

 park, and in some of our cities this has been carried to such 

 a point that park commissioners and superintendents are so 

 intimidated that the plantations under their charge are 

 abandoned to their fate, or, if a tree has to be cut down, it 

 is done surreptitiously. We have over and over again 

 called attention in these columns to the importance of judi- 

 ciously thinning park plantations, taking the side of experts 

 against theorists, and maintaining that if the greatest 

 possible enjoyment is to be obtained from public parks 

 they must be managed by men who understand their 

 business. 



This subject has recently been attracting a good deal of 

 attention in Boston, where correspondents of the daily 

 papers, usually signing themselves ''artist," have been 

 vigorously protesting against the much-needed thinnings 

 which have been made this year in the park plantations. 

 Boston a few months ago was fortunate in securing the 

 services of an educated, well-trained and efficient Park 

 Superintendent, who has become the executive of the 

 Board of Park Commissioners. The new Superinten- 

 dent saw at once that the park plantations placed in his 

 charge were in a deplorable condition. The trees, as we 

 pointed out in these columns a few months ago, were over- 

 crowded, full of dead wood, improperly nourished and 

 suffering from the attacks of various insects. Nothing had 

 ever been done to these woods and groves since the city 

 purchased them several years ago, and they have been in 

 an unsatisfactory and dangerous condition. The first 

 thing to be done, of course, under such circumstances is to 

 remove dead and dying trees, to cut out unnecessary sap- 

 lings, which often spring up like weeds in neglected parks 

 and plantations, and to furnish room and admit light to 

 the more promising trees. This the new Superintendent 



proceeded gradually to do, and it is this attempt to im- 

 prove the Boston parks which has raised such a storm 

 of protest from persons who, forgetting that parks 

 are not primeval forest, declare that the natural beauty 

 of the Boston park woods and plantations is being de- 

 stroyed. Such critics never remember that provision 

 must be made in parks for the free enjoyment and circu- 

 lation of great crowds of people, and that in order to 

 afford such facilities for the public natural forest conditions 

 must be more or less sacrificed. Few people realize that 

 the sylvan charms they plead for can only be secured with 

 the aid of healthy trees, and that trees which are over- 

 crowded, half-dead and full of insects can never produce 

 the results they demand. Segregations of human beings 

 in cities and their suburbs so change natural conditions 

 that woods in urban parks cannot be left exclusively to the 

 care of nature, however attractive this may sound in the 

 mouths of enthusiasts ; and man must adapt his planta- 

 tions to the unnatural conditions he has provided for them. 

 This whole subject is of such vital importance in its rela- 

 tion to the artistic and practical value of American parks 

 that we have taken occasion to examine carefully the effects 

 of the tree-cutting which has been done in the Boston parks 

 during the past winter, and our criticism upon it is that the 

 new Superintendent, desiring probably to feel his way in a 

 community new to him and unfamiliar with local condi- 

 tions, has nowhere yet sufficiently thinned the plantations 

 in his charge, and that the Boston parks, like those in every 

 other American city with which we are acquainted, are still 

 suffering from insufficient tree-cutting. 



A Garden for Children. 



WE have already called attention to a series of leaflets 

 prepared for the teachers of rural schools in the 

 state of New York, under the direction of Professor Roberts, 

 Director of the Ithaca Experiment Station. Under a state 

 law enacted for the purpose of extending the work of the 

 experiment station so as to give an impulse specifically 

 educational to the farmers of the state, several plans are 

 under trial. Itinerant or local experiments have been used 

 as a direct means of teaching. Bulletins have been issued 

 on various subjects like apple-culture, etc., in which the 

 theory and practice is briefly explained, and the history 

 and condition of different branches of rural industry have 

 been written in an attractive way. Horticultural institutes 

 or schools have been held in different towns and cities of 

 the state, and courses of reading have been prescribed in 

 connection with correspondence with the teachers in the 

 Agricultural College. One of the latest efforts is an attempt 

 to establish the study of nature in rural schools, and it is to 

 encourage this that the leaflets of which we have spoken 

 have been prepared. These little bulletins were primarily 

 intended for the teacher, and were meant to suggest the 

 ways in which he can interest his pupils at odd times in 

 some natural object or process. Of course, they may be 

 given directly to the advanced pupils for the purpose of 

 suggesting to them experiments and observations and for 

 encouraging them to examine objects for themselves to 

 form conclusions of their own and to state them m their 

 own language. Four of these illustrated leaflets have been 

 published, in the first of which the pupils are asked to in- 

 vestigate the way in which a Squash-plant gets out of its 

 seed ; in the second, a burning candle is the object of study, 

 and in the third they are asked to examine an apple-twig 

 and trace the history of* its fruit-spurs, its flower-buds, its 

 leaf-buds, its branchlets, etc. This third leaflet will be 

 found full of interest and suggestion to many grown-up 

 children who call themselves educated. A fourth leaflet is 

 for pupils rather than teachers, and it requests every school 

 child in the state to grow a few plants during next summer. 

 The only way to learn how plants grow is to grow them, 

 and personal investigation is the only way, as the leaflet 

 suggests, in which one can become intelligently interested 

 in anything that lives and grows. The specific request is 



