4io 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 504. 



value of its recreation-grounds for the purposes for which 

 they were intended. 



Railway corporations suffer in the same way. Many a 

 railway has gone to very heavy expense in making known 

 to the traveling public the scenic attractions of the 

 country along its line. The railway has, perhaps, been 

 built largely with the purpose of developing and making 

 accessible these attractions. The fact that the public has 

 been drawn to patronize such a route of travel gives value 

 to the neighboring lands, and when such lands are used by 

 the persons owning or hiring them in a way which is a 

 detriment to the parties that give them value — both the 

 railway company and the traveling public — the company 

 is clearly injured in its property rights as well as the public 

 in its common rights, and they therefore have just cause 

 to seek redress for damages inflicted. 



The case of a public road is similar. The facilities 

 created by the public for its own convenience are what has 

 given the value to abutting property. This being used for 

 advertising purposes to the public harm, the public has 

 cause to seek redress. The park authorities, the railway 

 company, the authorities representing the public in its 

 ownership of the highway ; these, as well as any indi- 

 viduals, should be sustained in a case in equity against 

 offensive advertising as a common nuisance. 



In Massachusetts the public park laws authorize park 

 commissions to take, by right of eminent domain, not only 

 lands, but rights in lands. It is clearly within their juris- 

 diction, therefore, to take such easements in lands about 

 public parks and parkways as will forbid their use for 

 offensive advertising purposes. The damage sustained by 

 land-owners in such takings could not be material, for 

 whatever profit they might gain by putting their property 

 to such use would be enormously offset by the damage 

 inflicted upon public rights through such use. This should 

 be an effective weapon, in addition to the restrictions 

 already alluded to as imposed by the Boston Metropolitan 

 Park Commission. 



It has been suggested that persons offended by obnoxious 

 advertising unite in boycotting the wares thus adver- 

 tised. Unfortunately there is too large a part of the public 

 indifferent to such considerations, and advertisers would 

 hardly be induced to reform their ways for fear of the 

 consequences. A concern, however, could not advertise 

 itself to better advantage than by announcing in the public 

 prints, " The advertisements of these goods are not used 

 for defacing natural scenery ! " It would constitute a badge 

 of respectability. 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — III. 



THE first of the genera of Coniferse (Tribe Cupressineae) 

 which we shall consider in these notes, Juniperus, is 

 well characterized by its subulate or scale-like leaves, 

 dioecious, axillary or terminal flowers, the staminate with 

 numerous stamens arranged on a central axis, the pis- 

 tillate of many scales, each bearing one or two erect 

 ovules and becoming thick and succulent and forming a 

 berry-like strobile at maturity. Of the three sections in 

 which botanists have grouped the species of Juniperus only 

 Oxycedrus and Sabina need interest us here, as the single 

 species of Caryocedrus, Juniperus drupacea, distinguished 

 by its capitate staminate flowers and united seeds, will not 

 probably prove hardy in our region, although Mr. Hoopes 

 states in his Book of Evergreens that it succeeds in the 

 neighborhood of Philadelphia. It is a small bushy tree, 

 rarely thirty feet in height and rather widely scattered from 

 Greece to northern Syria on mountain slopes, between two 

 thousand and five thousand feet above the sea-level, some- 

 times forming open forests or often mingled with Oaks and 

 Pines. The blue, fleshy, succulent berries of this tree, 

 which are often nearly an inch in diameter, are said to be 

 edible. In the other sections of Juniperus, where we are to 

 find garden plants for the north, there are about thirty-five 

 species, widely and generally distributed through the sub- 



arctic and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, 

 being, however, most abundant in countries of small rain- 

 fall. They are very common in the arid south-western part 

 of the United States and in northern Mexico, and in the coun- 

 tries bordering the Mediterranean, the largest number of 

 species being segregated in these two regions. Junipers are 

 scattered also from the Arctic Circle to the Bermuda and 

 West Indian Islands, the Atlantic Islands, east tropical Africa, 

 the Himalayas, and over eastern Asia, although it is only in 

 arid or comparatively arid regions that they are numerous 

 enough to be really conspicuous features of vegetation. 



Junipers produce durable fragrant wood much used for 

 posts and in the manufacture of many small articles, and 

 the bark of many of the species contains sufficient tannic 

 acid to make it valuable as a tanning material. In the 

 fruit there is an essential aromatic oil used since ancient 

 times in medicine ; to Juniper fruit gin owes its peculiar 

 flavor, and from the young leaves and branches of an Old 

 World species savin oil is distilled. 



Of the section Oxycedrus with seven or eight species, 

 distinguished by axillary flowers, and ternate linear acic- 

 ular leaves joined only at the base and white-glaucous on 

 the upper surface, the most generally known species, Juni- 

 perus communis, is more widely distributed than any other 

 tree or shrub of the northern hemisphere and in many 

 forms has been cultivated for centuries in northern gardens. 



In America this plant is distributed from the Arctic Circle 

 on the Atlantic coast to the hills of Pennsylvania, to north- 

 ern Nebraska, along the Rocky Mountains to western 

 Texas, New Mexico and northern Arizona, and from Alaska 

 to northern California ; in Europe it is common all over the 

 northern and central parts of the continent, and occurs on 

 the mountains of the Mediterranean basin ; it is spread 

 over northern, central and eastern Asia, extending south- 

 ward to the north-eastern Himalayas and by the way of 

 the Kurile Islands and Kamtchatka nearly completes the 

 earth's circle. 



In the north-eastern states Juniperus communis is a 

 rather common inhabitant of stony hillsides, where it 

 makes broad masses of stout stems three or four feet 

 high, spreading near the base and then ascending ; at high 

 elevations in the western part of the continent and far north- 

 ward the stems are still more prostrate, forming close mats, 

 and the leaves are often short and broad (var. Sibirica) ; 

 and it is only on the bold and broken summits of conglom- 

 erate sandstone and limestone hills in one district of south- 

 ern Illinois that this Juniper attains the habit and size of 

 a small tree, although in central Europe it is often tree-like 

 in its habit of growth. 



The common hillside form of Juniperus communis is 

 useful in forming low masses of evergreen foliage, or, 

 grown singly, it will soon make a handsome specimen, 

 which in time will become several yards in diameter. It 

 is, of course, perfectly hardy, and small plants can gen- 

 erally be found in old New England hill pastures and easily 

 transplanted into the garden. A variety of this plant with 

 bright yellow leaves and branches, which was first propa- 

 gated and distributed a few years ago by the late Robert 

 Douglas, of Waukegan, Illinois, is now frequently planted 

 by the admirers of such abnormally colored plants. 



Of the European forms of this species the most distinct 

 is the Swedish Juniper (var. Suecica), a plant with erect 

 branches forming a narrow, compact pyramidal head, and 

 occasionally eighteen or twenty feet high. This is one 

 of the few strictly pyramidal conifers which are really 

 hardy in New England, and it can be safely used here 

 in formal gardens or wherever it is desirable to pro- 

 duce the peculiar effects which can only be obtained with 

 pyramidal plants. Another fastigiate form of the common 

 Juniper, the so-called Irish Juniper (var. Hibernica), with 

 rigid erect branches clothed with short deep green leaves, 

 is a favorite European garden plant ; but in this country it is 

 not very hardy, even in the neighborhood of Philadelphia. 



The Polish Juniper (var. Cracovica) is a robust and 

 hardy plant with abundant foliage and pendulous terminal 



