November 24, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



459 



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. NOVEMBER 24, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles: — The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument 459 



Veneration for Remarkable Trees 459 



Notes on Cultivated Conifers. — VIII C. S. S. 460 



Notes from South-western China Dr. Augustine Henry . 461 



New or Little-known Plants :— Prunus Pseudo-cerasus. (With figure.) 462 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 462 



Cultural Department:— Japanese Plums Professor S A. Beach. 464 



Recent Importations among Chrysanthemums Wilhehn Miller. 465 



Correspondence :— Uncultivated Crops in the Ozark Mountains, 



Fanny Copley Seavey. 465 



The Beautifying of a Neglected Field Cynthia Force. 466 



Flowering Plants in a Mild Autumn John Chambcrlin. 466 



A Delicious Tuber Sylvester Baxter. 466 



The Forest : — Forestry in Women's Clubs — I M. B. C. 466 



Notes 467 



Illustration : — Prunus Pseudo-cerasus, Fig. 58 463 



The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument. 



EVERY one who is concerned to-day in the erection of 

 a monument of any sort in this city wishes it placed 

 in Central Park, where, as a rule, monuments do not belong 

 and could not be properly placed to secure their best effect, 

 and where they would injure the effect of the park itself. 

 When a site within the Park cannot be secured, a position 

 close to one of its chief approaches is desired. This is a 

 more justifiable wish. But, again, its result cannot be good 

 unless the character of the proposed monument and the 

 manner of its placing both conduce to dignity and harmony 

 of general effect. No greater mistake can be made in 

 such a matter than the placing of a monument, however 

 good, in such a way that it will embarrass the designer who 

 may hereafter be called upon to treat the remainder of the 

 space in which it stands, or to supply those monumental 

 entrances which were contemplated by Messrs. Olmsted 

 & Vaux when they designed the park itself. 



Just now this matter is peculiarly important, when 

 $250,000 have been secured for the erection of a Soldiers' 

 and Sailors' monument in this city. Neither the wishes of 

 those army and navy men who desired to have the monu- 

 ment placed on Riverside Drive, where the tomb of their 

 great leader stands, and where it would be visible from 

 the water as well as from the land, nor the recommenda- 

 tions of the experts asked by the committee of city officials 

 to advise in regard to its site, were regarded by this com- 

 mittee. Moved by the too general wish to connect their 

 monument with Central Park, and to place it where it 

 would be seen, not by the greatest number of persons, but 

 by those who roll by in their carriages, a site close to the 

 Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street entrance has been 

 chosen. The designer of the monument has also been 

 chosen. Competent judges declare that the schemes which 

 he presented were good in themselves, and would be less 

 offensive on the selected site than any offered by other 

 competitors. Nevertheless, if this monument is set on the 

 indicated spot it will seriously hamper the work of any 

 artist who may hereafter be commissioned to treat the 

 Plaza and the adjoining park entrance in a systematic and 

 proper way. 



Mayor Strong, who has done much for the beautifying 

 of New York during his three years' administration, tried 

 to do one thing more when he declared that nothing what- 

 ever ought to be placed on or near the Plaza until two million 

 dollars had been appropriated for its right adornment as a 

 whole. This even now would be a difficult task. Tall and 

 ugly buildings occupy two sides of the Plaza, and the lines 

 of the streets and park roads which run out from it cannot 

 be brought into harmony with an absolutely symmetrical 

 scheme. But a symmetrical scheme is not the only possi- 

 ble good one even in urban adornment ; and if two sides 

 of the Plaza are badly built upon, the Park to the north 

 and the great Vanderbilt house to the south with 

 the vista of Fifth Avenue beyond it, supply conspicuous 

 elements of beauty. A really able designer can still 

 give us a beautiful Plaza if no more incongruous ele- 

 ments are introduced before he gets to work, and if he 

 is not too closely hampered by that love of exact symmetry 

 which in many of our architects has recently developed 

 into an unreasoning passion, not unnaturally in view of the 

 discord and heterogeneousness which most parts of our 

 city display. A perfectly balanced and majestically uniform 

 effect can never be produced on this spot ; but a dignified, 

 harmonious and effective one may be achieved if every 

 foot of it is now jealously preserved intact until such time 

 as its embellishment as a whole may be undertaken. Until 

 this time comes, however, the most careful artist cannot 

 erect any monument within sight of the Plaza and keep its 

 general effect in mind; for, of course, he cannot divine how 

 this effect may eventually be conceived. The only safe 

 way is to do nothing here, but for the time being to place 

 all contemplated monuments in localities for which so 

 comprehensive a plan is not required. There are many 

 such situations not far from Central Park, and it ought still 

 to be possible to secure the placing of the Soldiers' and 

 Sailors' Monument in one of them, and to consider again 

 the advice given by the experts who were consulted by the 

 committee in the first instance. Or, if this is impossible, 

 the site should at least be shifted a little farther north. The 

 monument should not stand in the large circle at Sixtieth 

 Street, which is an integral part of the Plaza, but at the 

 extreme northern end of the Plaza between Fifth Avenue 

 and the entrance to the driveway of the park. Here such 

 a form as the selected architect has chosen would be quite 

 as appropriate as on the proposed site ; and it might 

 be worked with less difficulty into that general scheme for 

 the adornment of the Plaza and the park entrances which, 

 at some future day, the city will certainly wish to take 

 in hand. 



Veneration for very large or old or otherwise remarka- 

 ble trees is an indication of civilization and cultivation 

 which is not always as common in America as it 

 should be. In every country of Europe exceptionally 

 large and old trees are revered, and it would be considered 

 a sacrilege to injure them. Their portraits are frequently 

 published and their histories are familiar to all classes of 

 the community. As the primeval forest disappears its 

 remnants become sacred, and if we in this country are not 

 more alive to the necessity of preserving our remarkable 

 trees it is, perhaps, because we have not yet lost the instincts 

 for forest destruction inherited from ancestors who, forced 

 to cut trees in order to raise bread, had their hardest strug- 

 gle with the forest. Too often we hear of noble trees 

 being needlessly sacrificed even in the oldest and most 

 civilized states, and it is, therefore, pleasant to know that 

 a determined effort will be made by some of the inhabi- 

 tants of Media, Pennsylvania, to preserve from destruc- 

 tion a remarkable group of four Sassafras-trees standing 

 in the neighborhood of that town. The largest of these 

 trees at three feet from the ground is twelve feet six 

 inches in circumference and about eighty feet in height ; 

 the others are nearly of the same size and all are healthy 

 and symmetrical. These are the largest Sassafras-trees 

 east of the Mississippi River of which there is any record, 



