January 31, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



4i 



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, JANUARY 31, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles : — A German View of Landscape-art in America 41 



The Catskill Forest Reserve 41 



The Megalithic Humboldt Monument in Berlin. (With figure.). . . C. Bolle. 42 



Notes for Mushroom. eaters. — II. (With figure.). .Professor IV. G. Farlow. 43 



Entomological: — The Plum Curculio as an Apple Pest J. G.Jack. 44 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter . . . . W. Watson. 



Cultural Department : — Forcing Tomatoes IK A". Craig 



Chinese Primroses E. O. Orpet. 



The Earliest Flowers .... % N. G. 



Persimmons in New York E. P. P. 



Correspondence : — The Care of Birds in Winter T. D. H. 



Meetings of Societies : — The Western New York Horticultural Society.— I 48 



Notes 50 



Illustrations : — Agaricus procerus, the Parasol-fungus (two-thirds natural 



size) — ediUe, Fig. 5 44 



The Humboldt Monument in Berlin, Fig. 6 46 



A German View of Landscape-art in America. 



IN an address at the December meeting of the Prussian 

 Horticultural Society, with regard to his recent journey 

 in the United states, Dr. Wittmack is reported to have ren- 

 dered full justice to the efforts which had been made to 

 give the Horticultural Department of the Chicago Fair the 

 grandeur expected by the outside world. He mentioned 

 in detail the names of the principal exhibitors, so numer- 

 ous as regards America itself, although fewer than one 

 might have expected as regards Europe, notwithstanding 

 the fact that Germany was able to boast of having been 

 represented by sixty horticultural establishments. With 

 respect to the public gardens and parks which Dr. Witt- 

 mack had visited, his praises were unreserved. But the 

 motive to which he attributed the excellence of these 

 artistic creations seems so singular that one is tempted to 

 question the correctness of the report. He does not credit 

 it to that instinctive love of beauty and of nature which is 

 especially strong in the Anglo-Saxon race, but finds its mo- 

 tive in that rigorous observance of the Sabbath which in 

 many places deprives the American populace on Sundays 

 of all forms of enjoyment except those which are practica- 

 ble out-of-doors. 



We need hardly say to our American readers that this is 

 a mistaken view. Our parks and pleasure-grounds have 

 almost always been established and designed with the 

 needs of the poor, as well as of the rich, in view, and more 

 detailed arrangements for their general accommodation and 

 their sports have been provided here than has often been 

 the case in European parks. Of course, too, it has always 

 been understood that workingmen and their families, here 

 as in Europe, are able to enjoy every form of recreation 

 more freely on Sundays than on other days of the week. 

 But it is not probable that a definite desire to make up out- 

 of-doors for the strictness of our indoor Sunday observances 

 has ever been a conscious motive with our municipalities 

 or our landscape-artists. New York, for instance, lags be- 

 hind Chicago in the relative amount of ground improved 

 for general park purposes ; yet, in Chicago, theatres and 

 similar indoor places of amusement have long been open 



on Sunday, while in New York they are closed, and it is 

 only within a year or two that our museums and libraries 

 have opened their doors on this day. 



It is probably true that the example set by our park 

 authorities in allowing on Sunday many forms of amuse- 

 ment, like boating and skating, for example, has had an in- 

 fluence in bringing about a more liberal use of the museums 

 for which the people have paid, and the contents of which 

 they have small chance to enjoy during the week ; and the 

 value of Central Park, in demonstrating that the people of 

 New York, whether rich or poor, crave rational, orderly 

 forms of amusement on Sunday, and may be trusted to in 

 dulge in them discreetly, can hardly be overestimated 

 Still, to believe this does not justify the belief that Central 

 Park or any of our other pleasure-grounds were established 

 with a definite desire to make up out-of-doors for the over- 

 strictness of American sabbatical customs in general. The 

 hard struggle which was made before the grounds around 

 the Chicago Fair buildings could be opened on Sunday, 

 might have shown Dr. Wittmack the error of his assump- 

 tion. 



Further on in his address, which was full of the agreeable 

 souvenirs of his transatlantic excursion, Dr. Wittmack 

 praised the prodigious development of American horticul- 

 ture, and declared that "it has freed itself in many direc- 

 tions from the tutelage of Europe, and no longer needs 

 those importations from across the sea upon which it for- 

 merly depended. " Even for " that wandering of the imag- 

 ination which is shown in mosaic floral designs, too often 

 covering the turf with bizarre imitations of the most strik- 

 ingly prosaic kinds," Dr. Wittmack had a kind word to 

 say, although he explained that they would be considered 

 contrary to good taste in Germany. So, in truth, they are 

 considered in America, in places where the best taste finds 

 free expression in public pleasure-grounds. The foreigner 

 finds none of them in Central Park, in Prospect Park, or in 

 Franklin Park ; and, although the Boston Public Garden 

 contains too many pattern-beds, these include none of 

 those effigies of men and things and animals in high-relief 

 which so shock the eye in the South Park, at Chicago. In 

 our eastern states, we think, objects comparable to these 

 can be discovered only in cemeteries where control is 

 vested, not in a municipal body or in an artist, but in some 

 journeyman whose education has not kept pace with his 

 employer's vague desire to "beautify" his grounds, or 

 with his own wish to show how excellently he can grow 

 plants under difficult conditions. Moreover, that less 

 serious offense against refined taste, which displays itself 

 in too many and too gaudy pattern-beds, is seen more often 

 in Europe than in America. If the parks of Germany are 

 free from such common -place treatment, this is not 

 the case with the parks of France. Crudities in color 

 and shape have been perpetrated in the Bois de Bou- 

 logne and in the Pare Monceau, in Paris, the like of 

 which conspicuously displayed among distinctly natural- 

 istic surroundings can hardly be seen in the older settled 

 regions of this country. So far as our experience extends, 

 some of the parks of Chisago are more conspicuous offend- 

 ers in the way of mosaic decoration than any others, 

 although excellent taste is shown in some parts of the 

 same city, as, for instance, in the graceful, naturalistic 

 planting of flowers and flowering shrubs along many por- 

 tions of the Drexel Boulevard. It may distress our German 

 friends to learn that we have heard the glaring park de- 

 facements of some western cities explained by the prepon- 

 derance of the German element in their population. The 

 correctness of this explanation may well be doubted. 



In a report of the New York State Forest Commission, 

 offered last week to the Legislature, special attention 

 was invited to the necessity of some action relating to the 

 Catskill forests. During several years past there has been a 

 great deal of talk, without much effective action, concern- 

 ing the North Woods, but the fact has been generally over- 



