October 



i 897. J 



Garden and Forest 



399 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune 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. OCTOBER 13, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Article: — William A. Stiles 3go 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — II C. S. S. 400 



Magnolia glauca. (With figure.) M. L. Dock. 402 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter W. Watson. 404 



Cultural Department: — Chrysanthemums in the Garden y. N. Gerard. 404 



Dahlia Notes W. E. Endicott. 405 



Plants of Doubtful Hardiness T. D. Hatfield. 405 



A Thin-skinned Americana Plum Professor E. S. Go(/'. 406 



Vegetable-garden Notes W. N. Craig: 406 



Plant Labels G. W Oliver. 406 



Correspondence : — The Germination of Conifer-seeds T. H. Douglas. 407 



Fruil growing in Northern New England T. H. Hoskins, M.lK 407 



Recent Publications - 407 



Notes 4 oS 



Illustrations : — William A. Stiles 401 



Sprays of Magnolia glauca, Fig. 52 403 



William A. Stiles. 



WILLIAM AUGUSTUS STILES, the editor of this 

 journal since its conception and its general mana- 

 ger for many years, died at the home of his sister in Jersey 

 City on October 6th, after an illness of several months. 

 He was born in Deckertown, in northern New Jersey, 

 near the Pennsylvania line, on the 9th of March, 1837, 

 where his grandfather had removed in 1819, and was 

 the son of Edward A. Stiles and Evelyn Belmont Howell, 

 members of old and respected New Jersey families. His 

 father, who had been educated for the ministry, opened 

 in 1833 a small private school on his farm near Decker- 

 town, which rapidly grew in size and importance, and 

 when he retired from it thirty years later had become the 

 most important institution of learning in northern New 

 jersey. In this school William A. Stiles, who as a boy was 

 distinguished for intense love of reading and for proficiency 

 in music and mathematics, was fitted for college. He was 

 graduated with honors from Yale in the class of 1859, and 

 the following year became a teacher in his father's school 

 and began the study of law. His health had never been 

 robust, and his sight, injured in boyhood by excessive 

 reading, now became greatly impaired, and he was obliged 

 to give up his legal projects, and in 1864 went across the 

 Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco in the hope of deriving 

 benefit from the sea voyage. This expectation was more 

 than realized, and on arriving in California he was able to 

 accept a position as teacher in English literature and music 

 in a school in Oakland, but soon abandoned teaching to 

 become a member of the corps of engineers engaged in 

 running the line for the Central Pacific Railroad across the 

 Sierra Nevada. The strain upon his eyes in this employ- 

 ment proved too severe, and after a long illness in San 

 Francisco he returned to New York nearly blind. Gradually 

 recovering, he began to study politics and to write po- 

 litical articles for the newspapers. This led to his appoint- 

 ment as a ganger in the New York Custom House, a 

 position which, although never congenial, he continued 

 to fill for several years, leaving it finally to become a 

 member of the editorial staff of the New York Tribune, with 

 which he remained closely connected until his death. In 



1880 and in 1S83 he was defeated as Republican candi- 

 date for the State Senate from Sussex County, New Jersey, 

 and for the three years following his second defeat he 

 served the New Jersey Senate as Secretary. 



After his return from California Mr. Stiles became inter- 

 ested in plants and their cultivation on the farm and in the 

 garden, and in urban parks, and began to write about them, 

 his contributions to the daily papers on these subjects 

 attracting much attention, and in 1S83 he became, in 

 addition to his editorial duties on the New York Tribune, 

 the agricultural editor of the Philadelphia Press. When 

 the establishment of a weekly journal devoted to gar- 

 dening and forestry in this country was decided on, 

 Mr. Stiles was selected as the editor. The readers of 

 Garden and Forest need not be told how he has per- 

 formed his difficult task. Every week for nearly ten years 

 they have seen the results of his rare editorial judgment, 

 his literary skill, his good taste and unflagging zeal in 

 advancing the knowledge of the special subjects to which 

 Garden and Forest is devoted. He has been more, how- 

 ever, than a brilliant and successful editor of a technical 

 journal ; keen love of nature and sympathy with the 

 cravings of the poor shut within city walls from the 

 sight and enjoyment of the country made him fully under- 

 stand the value and true meaning of urban parks, and 

 for twenty years, always with that modesty which was 

 one of his strongest characteristics, but with inflexible pur- 

 pose, he has stood between the parks of this city and the 

 men who at different times and under different pretenses 

 have tried to deface them. His pen saved Central Park 

 from the speedway which threatened to ruin its rural char- 

 acter and destroy its true value. He preserved for the 

 people the charming sylvan glade where it was proposed 

 to place the menagerie which had become distasteful to 

 some of the wealthy residents on Fifth Avenue, and he 

 made it impossible to use Central Park for the Columbian 

 Exposition. It was his forethought and technical knowl- 

 edge which have modified and delayed the schemes of the 

 men who in their zeal for a botanic garden are willing to 

 deface, unnecessarily, Bronx Park, and could his life have 

 been prolonged this most valuable and beautiful of all the 

 rural possessions of the city might, perhaps, have been 

 spared for the best enjoyment of the public. These are 

 a few of the conspicuous services which he has performed 

 for the parks of this city, but for years hardly a month 

 has passed in which he has not preserved them from 

 some dangerous invasion. An educator in all that relates 

 to parks, reaching the public ear through the press, which 

 had unbounded confidence in his judgment and integrity 

 of purpose, his service to the people has not been merely 

 local ; his example has stimulated and his words have 

 instructed, and now in ever)' American community there are 

 who understand the significance of city parks and the 

 difficulties which those who labor to make them most 

 useful have to encounter. 



Mr. Stiles was a man of wide and deep sympathies 

 and of unusual intellectual activity in many directions : 

 he loved Nature in all her aspects, delighting in the 

 beauty of trees and flowers in the forest and in the 

 garden, and in their harmonious arrangement ; he loved 

 the song of birds, quiet sylvan lanes and sparkling 

 waters. To few men did music mean so much. The love 

 of it came from his mother, a woman of strong intellect 

 and great refinement, from whom, too, came his ready 

 and brilliant wit and keen perceptions.- Music was one 

 of the vital and influential forces of his life, and although 

 in later years he was not, except for his own pleasure, a 

 performer, he knew music thoroughly : ami his deep insight 

 and instinct for clear analysis made his musical criticisms 

 a source of unceasing pleasure to those who heard them. 

 Other subjects occupied his thoughts. A constant and 

 profound student of the Bible and truly reverential, he was 

 deeply read, too, in English literature and speculative 

 philosophy. A remarkable mathematician, he found mental 

 recreation in solving the most difficult problems ; learned 



