October 20, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



409 



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 20, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — The Advertising; Nuisance 409 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — III C. S. S. 410 



The Corsican Pine at Home -Maurice L de Vihnorin. 411 



Autumn Flowers in the Pines Mrs. Mary Treat. 411 



New or Little-known Plants :— Spirsea arbuscula. (With figure.). ... C. S. 5. 412 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter IV. Watson. 412 



Cultural Department : — A Lily-bulb Disease G. Massee. 414 



Work of the Season W. H. Tallin. 415 



The Hardy Plant Border in October Robert Cameron. 415 



Correspondence : — Some Questions of Color Mrs. Schuyler I 'an Rensselaer. 416 



In Nature's Own Domains Lora S. La Mance. 416 



A Winter Plantation Robert A. Kutsehbach. 417 



Rusty Appearance of Elm-leaves, 



O. S. Whitmorc, Frofessor Byron D. Halsted. 417 



Notes 41S 



Illustration: — Spira?a arbuscula. Fig. 53 413 



The Advertising Nuisance. 



THE abuse of natural scenery for advertising purposes 

 has long been one of the most abominable of public 

 nuisances. It has now become so flagrant in its atrocities 

 as to be intolerable. There is hardly any section of the 

 country where it can be escaped. In city suburbs, along 

 rural highways, parkways and nearly every line of railway 

 in the land the landscape is marred by the advertising 

 fiend. It is a serious question how this nuisance can be 

 suppressed. Bowlders, ledges, cliffs, fences and buildings 

 are painted over with hideous letterings, and quiet mead- 

 ows are defaced by gigantic signboards. Journeys, whose 

 chief interest used to consist in the enjoyment of scenery 

 from car windows, are converted into nightmare pilgrim- 

 ages. Scenery in travel has thus lost a great part of its 

 charm ; the lover of natural beauty can only be secure in 

 his enjoyment by selecting some spot, if he can, where 

 such things do not intrude, and resolutely staying there. 



There are laws on the statute books of several states 

 prohibiting the use of natural scenery for advertising pur- 

 poses. Where there chances to be local interest in the 

 subject sufficient to see that these laws are enforced they 

 serve their purpose to a limited extent. But, as a rule, 

 there is nobody whose duty it is to enforce them. Protests 

 are loud enough, and they indicate a widespread public 

 sentiment against the nuisance ; but there is seldom any 

 one who will take the trouble to bring complaint against 

 the offenders. In a few places rural improvement societies 

 have taken the matter in hand, and conditions are bettered 

 correspondingly ; in others the local officials have been 

 required by public sentiment to enforce the law, with grati- 

 fying results. The main trouble is, however, that the scope 

 of these laws is not sufficiently broad to meet the extensions 

 of the evil that mark the more recent methods of the land- 

 scape-advertiser. Nevertheless, encouraging indications of 

 changes for the better are to be noted in certain enactments 

 and in efforts to secure such legislation as will effectively 

 deal with the trouble. Some of these are mentioned in the 

 latest report of the Massachusetts Trustees of Public Reser- 

 vations. The standing committee of the trustees has ob- 

 served during the past year several marked signs of general 



disgust at the doings of advertisers : " For example, the 

 state of New York has passed an act granting powers to 

 the Park Department of the city of New York which will 

 enable them to control all advertising within 350 feet of 

 any public park or parkway. The Boston Metropolitan 

 Park Commission proposes to restrict its reservations by 

 making the acceptance of a restriction forbidding adver- 

 tising a condition precedent to the use of the park border- 

 roads by adjacent land-owners. The Pennsylvania Railroad 

 Company, by instituting cash prizes for the best-appearing 

 properties along its lines, is competing with the advertisers 

 with excellent results. The English society for checking 

 the abuses of advertising is pressing a bill in Parliament, 

 which, if enacted, will institute local option in this matter 

 by empowering such communities as accept the provisions 

 of the act to frame and enforce strict by-laws regulating the 

 practice of public advertising." 



It would be interesting to see how far the common law 

 may protect the public in this matter. It is an axiom that 

 moral right should be legal right as well. The law should 

 embody the sentiment of the community in this respect, 

 and it is probable that a powerful public sentiment would 

 soon convert moral right into legal right. The modern 

 extensions of the scope of the common law in relation to 

 public nuisances indicate that the protection of the public 

 in this regard is properly a function of that law. In equity 

 no man has a moral right to use his property in any man- 

 ner detrimental to public welfare. The law relating to 

 public nuisances is based on this principle. Modern public 

 sentiment now regards as public nuisances various actions 

 which were once held to be well within the limit of indi- 

 vidual rights, and the common law is interpreted accord- 

 ingly. It has long been recognized that no person maybe 

 permitted to pollute the air and the water, for they are thus 

 made detrimental to public health. Later the pollution of 

 the ground was placed under the ban for the same reason. 

 Later still it has been recognized that the nostrils and the 

 ears of the community are entitled to protection in the 

 same way. Foul smells and loud and discordant noises 

 have therefore been adjudged public nuisances under the 

 common law, and there is a goodly line of decisions to that 

 effect. 



Modern science demonstrates that the health is power- 

 fully affected by the condition of the nervous system; all 

 diseases are aggravated by undue drafts upon the nervous 

 energy, or by abnormal excitement of the nerves. Health 

 is protected by defending the ears against assaults that injure 

 the nerves, and we nave seen that the common law has 

 been made to cover the general welfare in this regard. 

 There only remains, therefore, one other great avenue of 

 sense to be guarded. It seems clear that offenses against 

 the vision may with equal justice be brought under the 

 scope of the common law and thus be adjudged public 

 nuisances. -Irritations of the eye, caused by hideous ob- 

 jects, offend the senses in the same manner that hideous 

 noises offend the ear and foul smells offend the nostrils. 

 The nerves suffer in the one case as they do in the others, 

 and public health is injured accordingly. The public has 

 a vested right in the landscape, whether the land be a pub- 

 lic or private possession, and no man should be permitted 

 to transgress that right wantonly. A long line of precedents 

 exists to indicate that there is no one sense which arbi- 

 trarily is not entitled to the protection enjoyed by the other 

 senses. 



In the case of offensive advertising in the neighborhood 

 of a parkway, it is evident that such advertising is displayed 

 to attract the attention of the people that frequent a public 

 pleasure-ground. The action of the public in establishing a 

 place for common recreation therefore gives opportunity for 

 certain private individuals to make a profit at public expense 

 and to the detriment of the public in its enjoyment of the 

 recreative facilities thus created. Without the public pleas- 

 ure-ground the adjacent lands would be worthless for adver- 

 tising purposes. The public therefore has just cause to 

 seek redress for the injury occasioned in diminishing the 



