1 62 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 479. 



eration are bound to respect, in spite of the protests of 

 timber sharks and mining- promoters who feel that their 

 designs upon the Government domain are in danger of 

 defeat. No doubt, there are many men who honestly 

 think that the proclamation will work hardship to the 

 regions in which the reserves lie, but any one who reads 

 the statement of the commission published in this journal 

 two weeks ago and notes how carefully every privilege 

 of settler, prospector and miner has been considered, 

 must come to the conclusion that no legitimate privilege 

 is imperiled, but that the rights and property of all the 

 people are preserved and guarded against attack by the 

 lawless who think only of their own present benefit. 



Pinus flexilis. 



it has grown miserably. A few of the plants raised from 

 Dr. Parry's seeds, however, have survived, but at the end 

 of thirty-five years are not more than five or six feet high, 

 with feeble branches and scanty foliage. In England it 

 appears to be more successful, and there has recently 

 appeared in The Garden a description of a specimen in the 

 Royal Gardens at Kew which produced cones last year. 

 This tree is now twenty-five feet high, with a trunk two 

 feet nine inches in circumference at the base, and two feet 

 in circumference at six feet above the surface of the ground. 

 It is as a curiosity that Pinus flexilis will be cultivated in 

 this country and in Europe, and its chief interest and value 

 is in its ability to flourish and produce merchantable 

 timber in such arid regions as New Mexico, Nevada and 

 south-eastern California. 



THE illustration on page 165 of this issue reproduces a 

 photograph of a remarkably noble specimen of the 

 Rocky Mountain White Pine, Pinus flexilis, which is stand- 

 ing in front of the United States military post in the Yellow- 

 stone National Park, in Wyoming, where it is growing at 

 an elevation of about 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, 

 and at three feet above the surface of the ground has a 

 trunk diameter of nearly five feet. 



Pinus flexilis is the first of the Rocky Mountain conifers 

 known to science, having been discovered in 1820 near the 

 base of Pike's Peak, in Colorado, by Dr. Edwin James, the 

 naturalist and surgeon of Long's Expedition to the Rocky 

 Mountains, who described it three years later in his journal 

 of this expedition. It is one of the five-leaved species, 

 although it differs from our eastern White Pine in its usually 

 shorter cones, much thicker cone-scales and nearly wing- 

 less seeds, and is more like the Swiss Stone Pine, Pinus 

 Cembra, than any other American Pine, differing, how- 

 ever, from that species in the internal structure of the 

 leaves. Never forming very extensive forests, Pinus flexilis, 

 which owes its name to the flexibility of its stout and ex- 

 tremely tough branches, is widely distributed from Bow 

 River, in Alberta, southward along the Rocky Mountains 

 to eastern Texas and westward over the mountain ranges 

 of Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah and Nevada to 

 south-eastern California, where it occurs on several of the 

 desert ranges, and even crosses the summit of the Sierra 

 Nevada to the upper waters of King's River, where it 

 grows up to elevations of nearly 12,000 feet above the level 

 of the sea. It is abundant also on many of the mountain 

 ranges of Arizona and New Mexico, and, no doubt, extends 

 over our southern boundary. Most frequently growing 

 singly or in small groves and among other conifers, this 

 Pine is the principal tree on some of the foot-hills of the 

 eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in Montana, and on 

 many of the ranges of central Nevada between 7,000 and 

 10,000 feet above the sea-level it forms extensive forests, 

 and is the most valuable tree of the region, giving the 

 name of White Pine to several mountain ranges and dis- 

 tricts. In northern Arizona and New Mexico it grows to 

 its largest size, here sometimes producing cones eight or 

 ten inches long, although the cones on this tree growing 

 in Colorado and northward are often not more than three 

 or four inches in length. The Rocky Mountain White Pine 

 is a tree usually forty or fifty feet in height, with a short 

 massive trunk from two to four, or rarely five feet in 

 diameter ; occasionally, however, it attains a height of 

 seventy or eighty feet, and at high elevations on the moun- 

 tains of central Nevada it is frequently reduced to a spread- 

 ing shrub with stems only two or three feet tall. 



Our illustration gives a good idea of the habit of this tree 

 as it grows under favorable conditions, although on the 

 mountains of northern Arizona it frequently produces taller 

 and straighter trunks, wdiich here and in Nevada and 

 Arizona are frequently manufactured into lumber. 



Pinus flexilis has been in cultivation in this country and 

 in Europe since 1861, when Dr. C. C. Parry collected seeds 

 of this tree and of several other Colorado conifers and sent 

 them to Dr. Asa Gray for distribution. In the eastern states 



The Park Systems of Minneapolis and St. Paul, 

 Minnesota. 



ABOUT thirty years ago what was then the little town 

 of Minneapolis held a town meeting to consider the 

 purchasing of twenty acres of land for a public park. The 

 opposition to the movement ridiculed the idea that the city 

 would ever extend far over the prairies, and argued that 

 the town itself was then all park. 



Fortunately for the still growing city, public spirit pre- 

 vailed. By 1883 the sentiment in favor of city pleasure- 

 grounds had risen so high that the Council called to its aid 

 a landscape-architect of experience and reputation, Mr. H. 

 W. S. Cleveland, who outlined a scheme for a system of 

 parks, and, above all, of parkways on each side of the Mis- 

 sissippi River, which, if its suggestions could be fully 

 carried out, would give the twin cities of St. Paul and 

 Minneapolis a magnificent and unique system of boule- 

 vards and pleasure-grounds. 



Upon the lines indicated, with such slight changes as 

 were incident to the rapid development of the city, Minne- 

 apolis has worked. And though business depression and 

 other causes have prevented the carrying out of the entire 

 plan, an important beginning has been made by the pur- 

 chase of land in desirable neighborhoods, and by securing 

 from destruction high banks of the river below the city. 

 St. Paul has not followed this worthy example, and seems 

 disposed to let slip its opportunities and not yet to have 

 awakened to the importance of handsome approaches to 

 its parks, nor even to the crying necessity of buying land 

 to add to them before it becomes too costly. 



In 1883 Minneapolis had a population of one hundred 

 thousand souls and a park area of about eighty acres, all 

 told. But the far-seeing policy of Mr. Cleveland was 

 designed to meet the needs of seven times that number of 

 persons. The present park area of Minneapolis, though 

 less than the original scheme provided for, is nearly 1,553 

 acres, including twenty-three and a half miles of parkways 

 and boulevards. A riverside park has been laid out, and 

 also a strip along the well -wooded eastern bank of the 

 Mississippi has been secured. A fine drive is thus afforded 

 and a park frontage of two miles along the river. It is pos- 

 sible that there may be ultimately a boulevard along its 

 shores to Minnehaha Park, extending south to the military 

 reservation of Fort Snelling ; and a recommendation has 

 been made that Lake Amelia be purchased for use as a 

 reservoir to hold the surplus water of the rainy seasons for 

 the use of the Minnehaha Falls during seasons of drought. 

 It is the effort of the Park Commission to secure the west 

 bank of the Mississippi also for the people, and to obtain 

 permission to hold the picturesque region to the south 

 between Minnehaha Park and Fort Snelling, owned by the 

 United States Government. 



In addition to the river frontage, Minneapolis has secured 

 on the opposite side of the city a fine chain of lakes, some 

 surrounded and others skirted by parkways. Lake Harriet 

 has an extent of 353 acres, and the Lake of the Isles covers 

 a hundred acres. 



Generous donations have been made by public-spirited 



