412 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 347. 



autumn will begin at once to plan and act, for there is not 

 a day to spare. 



Persons who have a full appreciation of the manifold 

 uses of city parks and of their refreshing value to a city's 

 population are often impelled to protest against some inva- 

 sion of these green spaces. In a crowded city everybody 

 wants room, and there is no end of projects to get hold of 

 it, especially when it can be had for nothing, and the offi- 

 cials in charge of a city's public grounds often do practi- 

 cally give away park-land, every square foot of which is 

 worth as much money as many an acre of good farm-land. 

 In this city our parks are constantly threatened with con- 

 fiscation for buildings or railroads or trotting courses, or 

 for a hundred other objects. We are accustomed to think, 

 however, that they do things better in the Old World, and 

 wish for some of the public sentiment which has protected 

 the open spaces of London, for example, during so many 

 generations ; but the truth is that the same struggle is 

 going on in all the great cities of the world. Not long ago 

 the London Standard contained a vigorous protest from 

 Mr. William Robinson, because a band-stand had been 

 set up in the Temple section of the Victoria Em- 

 bankment Gardens. It seems that the proprietors of 

 certain newspapers had subscribed a sum of money to 

 provide music gratuitously for the printers during the 

 leisure of their dinner-hour, and the chairman of the Parks 

 Committee of the London City Council answered Mr. Rob- 

 inson that, inasmuch as the music cost the city nothing, it 

 was the duty of the Council to provide a convenient stand 

 out of the public money, and therefore they erected one in 

 the gardens. To this Mr. Robinson made reply : 



If the music-loving people are allowed to erect any struc- 

 ture to meet their wants in what is clearly intended to be a 

 public garden, for the same reasoo other bodies may prevail 

 on the City Council to allow them, for some frivolous end, 

 to occupy and disfigure the gardens which belong to the peo- 

 ple of London, and any one can see what this will lead to ulti- 

 mately. It required a long and costly struggle to secure these 

 parks, and it is clear that if the Council does not protect them 

 from encroachment they will, in time, become mere parade- 

 grounds. They were small enough originally, but a little grass 

 and a few trees were refreshing. When, however, an ugly 

 structure — or any structure — is set up in their centre, with 

 asphalt walks leading to it, all possibilities of verdure and re- 

 pose are destroyed. Evidently some people's idea of a public 

 garden in London is one with a band-stand on one hand and a 

 ginger-beer shop on the other, or we should not see these things 

 in what ought to be quiet and refreshing green. One can 

 realize the wild joy of Africans on finding such signs of civil- 

 ization in a comparatively airy desert, but why they should be 

 placed in the midst of a town-garden while (here are music- 

 halls and concert-rooms and ginger-beer shops all around 

 them in the street, is not easy to see. It is notoniy to-day that 

 must be thought of ; every year will bring pretensions for re- 

 freshment-rooms or band-stands, and always, where possible, 

 they will be placed in the middle of the open space or in some 

 once pleasant lawn in it, thus destroying its unity of design 

 and all its beautiful and refreshing effect. 



Very plainly, there are men in London, and officials, too, 

 as well as there are in more than one American city, who 

 think that the only way to improve an open space is to 

 build something on it, and who do not realize that grass 

 and shrubs and trees are possessions of just as immediate 

 practical value as pure water, good drainage, fresh air, 

 hospitals, schools and churches. 



Prairie Woodlands. 



' HEN pioneers began to settle in our primeval forests 

 the natural impulse to plot in right lines led to the 

 clearing of rectangular spaces, so that the surviving pieces 

 of woodland are mostly bounded by straight lines.^ Time 

 has, however, modified and beautified the abrupt and naked 

 forest-borders that skirted the newly cleared fields. The 

 taller trees along the margins have been overturned by the 

 wind, lower ones have grown up with rounded tops and 

 limbs which spread out to reach more light; an, under- 



growth of shrubs and herbs has sprung up by the enclos- 

 ing fences, so that an unbroken bank of foliage stretches 

 from the ground to the tree-tops. 



In the woodlands of a prairie region these sloping borders 

 are characteristic, and the bounding lines naturally curve 

 with the windings of streams and valleys and the outlines 

 of timber-clad hills. These masses of timber are often sur- 

 rounded by treeless praiiie or cultivated fields, the woods 

 being left to supply the adjoining country with forest-prod- 

 ucts. The large trees have been cut off, but the ground 

 is left to grow up with timber again, and under the stimu- 

 lus of self-interest a kind of rude forestry is practiced. If 

 the wooded areas are too large to be embraced with profit 

 in adjacent farms, they may be divided into portions of a 

 few acres, and be owned by several farmers living within 

 easy distance. These small holdings in the groves are 

 bought and sold with the main estate, and this also tends 

 to their preservation and keeps them in larger tracts, so that 

 one may sometimes follow belts of unbroken woodland 

 for miles along a stream. Fed by springs which issue 

 from the bases of the bordering slopes, even the small 

 streams become perennial in the shade of the woods, though 

 when followed away from the forest a dry bed may mark 

 their course through the prairie in summer. The farmer 

 thus becomes a conservator of the woodlands which help 

 to preserve moisture for the soil, as well as to form one of 

 the most pleasing elements of the landscape ; for this region 

 is monotonous as a whole — a plain with no striking features 

 in the way of hills and mountains. 



These wooded areas are generally used for pasture, fre- 

 quently to their injury ; but cattle and horses being chiefly 

 kept, the undergrowth is not as closely cropped as when 

 sheep have their range. Portions of the adjoining prairie 

 are often included in the pasture, especially on the hills or 

 along swampy lands. Points of timber jut out from the 

 main body into the prairie, running down the hillsides or 

 along ravines and watercourses, or out into swamps into 

 which drier land projects. An occasional tree or small 

 group of trees stands apart from the rest, still farther vary- 

 ing the outline of the border, while larger groups, like 

 islands in a sea of prairie, lie apart from the main body. 

 The use of the tree-covered ground and the adjacent prairie 

 for grazing often saves these isolated trees and groups ; for 

 where land is devoted to the plow they are apt to be cut 

 down, as may be observed where the rich soil of the prairie 

 comes close up to the woods. If in wettish grounds the 

 trees may be spared because they do not encumber a 

 meadow from which hay is taken, and which may be pas- 

 tured only a part of the year. The limbs of these detached 

 trees or groups come down low about the trunks, the tops 

 are round and spreading, and a sturdy and symmetrical 

 habit has been developed by the free play of light and air 

 on every side. 



A pleasing feature of these woods is the way in which 

 the border merges into the green of the prairie Belts of 

 trees lining low and swampy prairies, or the sloughs with 

 which they are interspersed, become attractive, or even 

 beautiful, notwithstanding many of their unpleasant sur- 

 roundings. A continuous mass of foliage joins the green 

 below with that at the tops of the tallest trees. Willows 

 and Alders, the Swamp Rose, Button-bush and Osiers of 

 various kinds are followed by Viburnums, Sumachs and 

 Sassafras. These and other tall shrubs or low trees furnish 

 a gradual or undulatory slope from the rank Grass, Reeds 

 and Rushes of the swamp to taller Elms and Swamp 

 Maples, and the Oaks and Hickories of the drier back- 

 ground. The wide variety in the tints of green foliage 

 makes these borders attractive in summer, and when 

 autumn kindles its fiery colors in the leaves they are fairly 

 radiant with beauty. Various shrubs connect the dry 

 upland woods with pasture and meadow. The leaves and 

 glandular twigs of the Hazel are not agreeable to brows- 

 ing animals, and it becomes common along the margins 

 of woods and fields, or forms outlying masses between 

 the field grasses and the foliage of Oaks and Hickories. In 



