September 19, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



37 1 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by 



r Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE TOST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Eoitortal Articles :— The Element of Beauty in City Parks 371 



The Constitutional Amendment Relating to State Forest-lands 372 



Vases for Cut Flowers IK G. 372 



The Woodpecker and Bird's-eye Poplar Professor A. D. Hopkins, 373 



Entomological :— The Flat-head Pear-borer. (With figure.) 



Professor John B. Smith. 373 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 374 



New or Little-known Plants :— Indigofera decora alba. (With figure.) 376 



Plant Notes 376 



Cultural Department :— Seasonable Work , E. O. Orpet. 376 



Dutch Bulbs J. N. Gerard. 377 



Crinum Moorei J.N. Gerard. 377 



Jelly Fruits E. P. Powell. 377 



Bush Lima Beans Quis. 378 



Muskmelon Emerald Gem R. A. 378 



Lilium sulphureum G. 378 



Old Varieties of Apples E. P. P. 378 



Correspondence :— United States Nurseries, Short Hills, New Jersey, 



IV. N. Craig. 378 



Meetings of Societies: — American Forestry Association. — III 379 



Notes 380 



Illustrations : — Pear-tree, showing galleries made by borers. Fig. 60 373 



Indigofera decora alba. Fig. 61 375 



The Element of Beauty in City Parks. 



THE somewhat pretentious new bridge which has been 

 built over the Harlem River at the point where the 

 old McComb's Dam Bridge once spanned it, is soon to be 

 opened for traffic, and at a meeting of the Park Board last 

 week it was agreed to buy a few acres of land at its 

 northern extremity so as to provide for the structure 

 something in the way of a park-like approach. If this 

 land were properly treated it would make an appropriate 

 addition to a public work of such magnitude, but, so far as 

 the reports of the meeting show, no step was taken to 

 insure such treatment — that is, the public is not informed 

 that the matter was referred to the landscape-architect for 

 any suggestion or advice. It is to be hoped, however, that 

 the Board will in this case follow the natural order of busi- 

 ness and refer the matter to their official adviser, who, after 

 making a careful study of the land and deciding on a gen- 

 eral scheme of treatment, can mark out its proper bounda- 

 ries and give intelligent reasons for his choice. It would 

 hardly seem possible for a Park Board to pursue any other 

 course, but, judging from the prevailing practice of our 

 present officials, they will seize such territory as they 

 imagine they can take care of, and after outlining, in a 

 haphazard way, its limits, they will begin to blast and dig 

 without any clear or intelligent conception of what they 

 propose to do or how the work will ultimately appear. 

 Under such handling all the money expended on the new 

 park is likely to be wasted, and instead of beautifying the 

 neighborhood and dignifying the approach to the bridge, it 

 will be an eyesore and an offense to good taste for all time 

 to come. 



It will be remembered that in the case of the Harlem 

 Driveway, which begins near this bridge, the commis- 

 sioners assumed to take the matter into their own hands, 

 though there is not one of them who is suspected of possessing 

 any original aptitude or experience in this direction, and 

 not one whose judgment on any of the questions involved 

 would have the slightest value. They simply took a strip 

 so many feet wide, and after ordering an engineer to lay 

 down a road gave out the contract. Every newspaper in the 

 city and every association connected with art at once re- 



monstrated against such barbaric treatment of two or three 

 miles of the city's water-front. It was calmly replied to 

 these remonstrances that a landscape-architect would be 

 employed when the proper time came. Of course, the 

 time for study is at the outset and in the preparation of a 

 design, and the representatives of any civilized city would 

 naturally have referred the whole subject to a skilled park- 

 maker, especially if there were such a one in their employ, 

 and this official would then have made a careful survey 

 of the ground, with a study of its special features and sur- 

 roundings. He would have worked out a plan, marked the 

 boundaries of the land required, making it wider here and 

 narrower there, as the situation demanded, with a definite 

 purpose not only to make a good driveway, but to accom- 

 modate the throngs of people who would be there on festal 

 occasions, to devise ways for crossing the road and for 

 preventing congestion at certain points, and to furnish fa- 

 cilities for the enjoyment of the animated spectacle which 

 will hereafter be presented both on the river and on the 

 road. All this would have been carried out in the most 

 practical way, and yet with a constant purpose to develop 

 the pleasing picture in the artist's mind which was to be 

 realized in the construction. The Park Board, however, 

 began to construct a pleasure-ground which was to cost 

 millions of dollars, without trying to form any idea how it 

 would look when completed ; with no intelligent notion, 

 in fact, how it ought to look, and with no suspicion that an 

 artist in landscape could here conceive and execute a 

 panorama of riverside scenery that would distinctly en- 

 hance the attractiveness and value of this part of the city. 

 It now appears that these practical people who sneer at 

 art, and who have given no attention to preserving or 

 developing the natural beauties of the region, have also 

 undertaken to carry out an impossibility in construction — 

 that is, such a road as they have projected cannot possibly 

 be built on the land taken for the city, and unless they 

 can piece out their possession in some way they must 

 whittle down the sidewalks or the wheel-track. 



What may happen to the new park north of the Harlem 

 is foreshadowed by what is going on at the southern end 

 of the bridge, where the city already possesses some land 

 for an approach in the shape of a triangle of which the 

 river forms one side. Upon this little park area there is a 

 massive pile of rock which certainly might be utilized in 

 some way to beautify it. Just what advantage should be 

 taken of this natural feature, and just how much of it 

 should be allowed to remain in position, it would require 

 some study to decide. But so far, as it appears, the land- 

 scape-architect has not been consulted in the matter, and 

 this means that the commissioners have again assumed to 

 design a park themselves. At least, they have ordered the 

 rock blasted down to the level and carted away, and no one 

 knows what they will next attempt. Every one does know, 

 however, that a work which is meant to be an ornament 

 to a city like New York, and which ought primarily to be a 

 work of art, should not be undertaken without some careful 

 design by a competent artist. 



This is a matter of more than local importance. Scores 

 of cities are securing land in these days for public purposes, 

 and if the metropolis of the New World is willing, by its 

 example, to assert that there is no such a thing as landscape- 

 art, or, at least, that it is not worth considering, there is 

 danger that the element of beauty in the design and con- 

 struction of parks will be ignored elsewhere. If this notion 

 should prevail, our city parks may have some value as 

 breathing-places, but they will altogether miss their higher 

 purpose, furnish no rest to the weary mind and make no 

 appeal to our higher natures through the imagination. The 

 work of the landscape-painter has a value because he paints 

 scenery that he has found to be attractive, and the 

 purchaser of his pictures desires to see with his own 

 eyes the beautiful aspects of nature which the painter 

 spends his life in searching for and reproducing. As 

 civilization advances, men of liberal culture have discovered 

 that they can enjoy the real thing as well as they do the 



