May 16, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



191 



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. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article:— The Charles River at Boston igi 



Oaks in May E. J. Hill. 192 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 193 



New or Little-known Plants: — A New Bumelia from Mexico. (With figure.) 



J. N. Rose. 195 



Cultural Department: — Notes on Trees and Shrubs J. G. Jack. 195 



Current Notes on Irises y. N. Gerard. 195 



Flower-garden Notes E. O. Orpei. 196 



Spring Flowers in Vermont F. H. Horsford. ig-j 



Sweet Peas, Violets IV. N. Craig: 197 



Correspondence :— The Beauty of Rural England A. McC. Hallock. 198 



Early Wild Flowers in West Virginia Danske Dandridge. 198 



Societies :— For Uniformity in Naming Garden-plants 199 



Recent Publications 199 



Notes 200 



Illustration : — Bumelia Palmeri, Fig. 35 196 



The Charles River at Boston. 



IF the project for the improvement of the lower reaches 

 of the Charles River, just laid before the Massachusetts 

 Legislature, is adopted, Boston and its metropolitan envi- 

 ronment will possess a chain of recreation-grounds which, 

 for attractiveness and accessibility, will have no supe- 

 riors in the world. The problem of dealing satisfactorily 

 with the Charles River has been a trying one. It was con- 

 sidered by a special commission appointed nearly three 

 years ago, and in its memorable report on a system of 

 open spaces for the neighborhood of Boston, the Metropli- 

 tan Park Commission gave much attention to the subject. 

 Good progress was made by both these bodies, but as it 

 was a subject requiring much special study, the Legisla- 

 ture of last year entrusted the matter to a joint board, con- 

 sisting of the State Board of Health and the Metropolitan 

 Park Commission, with specific instructions to report a 

 plan for its improvement. The Health Board was made 

 a factor in the investigation on account of the serious 

 sanitary elements of the question. Very fortunately it 

 happens that Dr. Henry P. Walcott, of Cambridge, who, 

 as the chairman of that board, was also made chairman 

 of the joint committee, is a man of taste and of par- 

 ticular sympathy for the landscape and recreative aspects 

 of the problem. The admirable character of the report in 

 this respect is in a great measure due to this circumstance. 

 The engineering features of the scheme originated with 

 Mr. Frederic P. Stearns, the engineer of the Health Board, 

 and the design is the result of the studies of Messrs. Olm- 

 sted, Olmsted & Eliot, the landscape-architects for the Met- 

 ropolitan Park Commission. Mr. Eliot, as a member of the 

 Charles River Improvement Commission, was already 

 thoroughly familiar with the subject. 



The Charles River is a very crooked stream ; it draining 

 an area of about 200 square miles. It forms the southerly 

 boundary of a portion of Boston, between the city and Ded- 

 ham, and then, after a course of some thirty miles, again 

 comes to the city from the westward, changing to an estu- 

 ary at the dam in Watertown, expanding to a wide basin 

 between Boston and Cambridge, and then flowing 



through the heart of the city with the Charlestown district 

 for its left bank. The Charles is now commonly taken to 

 end at its confluence with the Mystic, off the Navy Yard, 

 but in the old times its mouth was considered to be the 

 entrance to the bay at Boston Light. The scope of the 

 investigation covered the stream from the Waltham boun- 

 dary down, directly affecting the four municipalities of 

 Watertown, Newton, Cambridge and Boston. The rep'ort 

 states that no treatment of the stream can be entirely satis- 

 factory that does not include the region above the Wal- 

 tham line. That portion of the problem, however, is com- 

 paratively simple. Not so, however, the last half-mile 

 which is included within the scope of the investigation. 

 Here the conditions had been so complicated by the plan- 

 less possession of the stream by the railroads entering 

 Boston from the northward, which in the past few months 

 have made new and extensive encroachments here, that 

 it seemed hopeless to attempt to deal with this section for 

 the present. 



The scheme proposed is radical and comprehensive, and 

 is also the most economical one possible. Hamburg, with 

 its beautiful Alster basin, furnishes the precedent, and as 

 the conditions of the problems are, in many respects, iden- 

 tical, the example of the German city is closely followed. 

 At Hamburg a small and shallow stream was dammed, 

 forming a charming lake extending far back into the coun- 

 try, whose waters are very extensively used for pleasure 

 purposes. 



The Charles presents a still nobler opportunity. It is 

 proposed to dam the river between Boston and Cambridge 

 from the handsome pleasure-ground, the Charlesbank, 

 across to the contemplated new one in East Cambridge, 

 called "The Front." This dam, a causeway 100 feet wide 

 on top, will provide a broad new bridge, and will have a 

 lock for navigation. Above is the ample basin that com- 

 prises what is left of the old Back Bay. By excluding the 

 tide it will become a fresh-water basin, and by maintain- 

 ing its level eight feet above low water, and two and a half 

 feet below high-water mark, it will furnish the simplest and 

 cheapest means of improving for park purposes or other 

 uses the extensive marsh-grounds bordering the stream. 

 There are a thousand acres of such lands whose drainage- 

 level would thus be lowered and made suitable for park 

 treatment at comparatively small cost. The salt-marshes, 

 for instance, would be made fresh, so that they could be 

 planted with trees and shrubbery, with pleasing vegetation 

 clothing the shores to the water's edge. Whoever has seen 

 the Teltauer Anlagen, near Berlin, on the banks of the 

 Spree, or the parks of Chicago, will perceive what beautiful 

 scenery can be easily created on these level lands adjoin- 

 ing the Charles, particularly when we consider their supe- 

 rior attractiveness in the possession of more varied horizon. 



This form of treatment also offers the best safeguard 

 against freshets by furnishing a broad water surface whose 

 level would be but slightly raised by the heaviest flood. 

 The Back Bay Fens improvement was originally designed 

 to perform a like surface for the Stony Brook water-shed, 

 and has often justified the prophecies of its value. The 

 dam proposed also furnishes complete protection against 

 inundation by the exceptional tides which sometimes rise 

 on the coast. It is estimated that, in the lessened expense 

 for retaining-walls made possible by excluding the tide, the 

 dam will save something like four times its cost. It is pro- 

 posed to treat the upper reaches of the improvement in a 

 more natural and, at the same time, less costly way by 

 beaches and sloping shores. 



Cambridge has already entered upon an extensive scheme 

 of park improvement, the most valuable feature of which 

 is the river-bank, which has been taken for a distance of 

 about four and a half miles, to be laid out in esplanades, 

 playgrounds and parkways. That side of the river, by 

 reason of its pleasant exposure, is peculiarly adapted to 

 development as an attractive residence section. 



On the Boston side the Park Department has under con- 

 sideration a plan for the extension of the Charlesbank — the 



