232 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 329. 



dining-rooms and music-rooms. The present arrange- 

 ments would thus lie interfered with, while it would prob- 

 ably be difficult to reconcile the extensions with the origi- 

 nal plan. 



A similar expedient would be to modify or reconstruct 

 the present rear elevations, back yards, etc., in a way to 

 give them an agreeable appearance. This might be 

 achieved, perhaps, by the addition of balconies, loggias 

 and bay-windows ; by painting existing walls of rough 

 brick ; by equalizing sky-lines with the help of balustrades 

 and parapets ; by making the line of stables and back 

 sheds the basis for a terrace-like effect, and by similar 

 expedients. It is essential, of course, that these changes 

 should be made upon some basis of common agreement, 

 and not left to individual caprice in any respect, and that 

 there should be a carefully studied harmony of effect in 

 color, design, etc. Unity of action would be absolutely 

 essential. To this end we recommend that the householders 

 join in commissioning the most competent architectural 

 and landscape authorities to devise the best possible 

 scheme for dealing with the question. The most difficult 

 element in this proposition is the fact that a few refractory 

 individuals would, by their refusal, have the power to 

 thwart the entire project. 



Flower Days of the Midwinter Fair. 



LIBERAL use has been made of both wild and garden 

 _j flowers in decorations and otherwise at the California 

 Midwinter Fair. The public has responded quickly to 

 every effort made in this direction, and it is easy to see 

 that any future fair in California will have still greater 

 flower festivals and exhibitions. The material is here, if 

 properly organized, to make the season of annual flower 

 events highly attractive to the rest of the world, and full of 

 educational value to the people of California, more espe- 

 cially to the children. Santa Barbara, the charming sea- 

 side city, has already a national reputation for its flower 

 day, and other towns and colonies are instituting annual 

 festivals. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and oriental 

 influences are all seen in the creations of the California 

 flower festivals, while the guiding spirit of the whole is 

 clearly American. 



The notable flower event of the Fair was the floral festival 

 of Saturday, May 19th. Four great arches of flowers, bunting 

 and Pampas-plumes were built at the corners of the Grand 

 Court, and festoons of wild flowers stretched over the 500 

 feet of space from the flag-poles at the side to the tall tower 

 in the centre of the court. White, green and gold were the 

 prevailing colors here. In front of the Administration 

 Building, a net containing 40,000 roses stretched between 

 the flag-poles. Many buildings were beautifully decorated 

 with evergreens, festoons and flowers. An estimate was 

 made that the floats, arches and carriages in the proces- 

 sion, the main effects on the buildings and the battle royal 

 in the afternoon used not less than four million flowers, a 

 majority of which were roses. Such estimates are neces- 

 sarily inexact, for no one could keep tally of the incoming 

 boxes and wagon-loads of bloom, but collections of five or 

 ten thousand roses made so little impression in the large 

 spaces of the Fair, that one could measure in some degree 

 the quantities required to cover the huge floats and tri- 

 umphal arches. 



The conventional elements of a flower procession, as of 

 any May-time masque or other outdoor celebration, are 

 seldom as attractive or artistic as the more free and 

 original displays of individual talent. Great floats repre- 

 senting battle-ships and municipalities seem too often as 

 formal and unimaginative as the grotesque allegorical 

 pieces so popular in mediaeval Europe. They are often 

 the merest survivals of a splendid past, impossible of 

 artistic revival. What seems to better suit the modern 

 flower festival is the spontaneous and universal spirit of 

 gayety expressed in a thousand simple forms. Flower- 

 covered bicycles, carriages, carts, jinrikishas and other 



vehicles ; flower-laden children, and crowds as full of sun- 

 shine as an Italian summer afternoon — these were the ele- 

 ments that really gave life to this California carnival, 

 through which the huge floats lumbered like unwieldy 

 galleons. 



Nothing in the whole procession was more charming 

 than a Japanese jinrikisha covered with the rich golden 

 flowers of the beach lupin. A Japanese girl sat within 

 and carried golden lupins. In all details, the harmony of 

 color was perfect. Marguerites, white and yellow, were 

 used in another jinrikisha, and a third was many-colored. 

 The Chinese vehicles were probably the richest in color- 

 scheme of anything on the grounds. Oriental flower- 

 girls, blossom-wreathed equestrians, a garlanded bull and 

 its rider from the Hawaiian village, and similar features 

 passed in procession or wandered through the crowd, 

 which, in the evening, numbered about 150,000. As I 

 stood in the great court, watching the lighting up of build- 

 ing after building with electric flashes, the sweet breath of 

 acres of blossoming Eucalypts, Acacias and white and 

 golden Genistas came from many slopes of the wide park 

 in which the Sunset City lies. Other acres of smaller 

 blossoming plants lay about me, in and around the Grand 

 Court. The flower carnival was merely a passing incident 

 in the story of spring-time, and the hundreds of laughing 

 children, who carried flowers home, were only one com- 

 pany out of the tens of thousands who take pleasure every 

 day in the innumerable gardens of California. 



Berkeley, California. Charles Howard Skllin. 



The Road to the Pyramids of Gizeh. 



THE avenue which is here most imperfectly depicted 

 (see p. 235) is, I believe, in reality the noblest and 

 most beautiful shaded avenue in the world. There are other 

 fine avenues in Cairo, and that which connects the city with 

 the village of Shubra on the north is justly very much ad- 

 mired ; but it is composed of two sorts of trees, while the 

 one above represented has only one sort. It is in Bulak, 

 an island in the Nile west of Cairo, and four or five miles 

 long. The avenue itself is on the western side of the 

 island, and is, perhaps, two miles or two miles and a half 

 long. The trees I have not measured, but I should say 

 they are from seventy to eighty feet high, and the finest 

 of them must be about one hundred feet in diameter through 

 the top. They are all of them of the species to which 

 Bentham gave the name of Albizzia Lebbeck (Arabic, 

 Ziebach, according to Speke), and such superb plants 

 I have not beheld anywhere else. It is, of course, a 

 tropical tree, related to the Acacia family, and originat- 

 ing, as some writers say, in southern India. It is common . 

 enough in the Orient, and I have seen several very poor 

 specimens on the hills around Jerusalem, and much better 

 ones on the slopes of Vesuvius ; but nowhere does it attain 

 the magnificent proportions or the extraordinary beauty of 

 foliage which are displayed in this avenue. The richness 

 of its dark color and the substance and lustre of its leaves 

 give it a peculiar charm. 



The best account of the Albizzia group that I have been, 

 able to find is that in Eugene Fournier's Notes sur le genre 

 Albizzia in the Annates des Sciences Kalurelles for i860, 

 where he specifies eighteen varieties. Bentham's special 

 work on the Leguminosa? I have not at hand, but in his 

 Flora Auslraliensis he describes five species, including the 

 Lebbeck ; Baron von Miiller, in his valuable work on tropical 

 plants available in Australia, describes eiglit varieties. 

 Schweinfurth also speaks of finding the Lebbeck in the 

 equatorial regions of Africa ; and Captain Speke found it 

 planted before the government house in Khartoom. 



The variety of Albizzia with which we are most familiar 

 in the United States, the Julibrissin, of which an admirable 

 description appeared in Garden and Forest (vol. ii., p. 532), 

 is said by Monsieur Fournier to have originated in the 

 forests on the shores of the Caspian Sea. 



New York. 



C. A. Dana. 



