December 12, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



499 



Climbing Roses in California. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest: 



Sir, — The thornless Banksian Roses, being of rather a tender 

 constitution and not well adapted to greenhouse culture, are 

 rarely seen in northern latitudes. But there are three varieties 

 of them quite generally cultivated in California and popularly 

 known as the white, large yellow and the small yellow. The 

 habits oflhese three are so nearly alike that they can only be dis- 

 tinguished by thetlowers. Those of the white and small yellow 

 varieties are here about the size of twenty-five-cent pieces, and 

 those of the other yellow are as large as a half-dollar. In spring 

 they are borne in such abundance that they fairly hide the 

 bright green foliage of the plants. Half a dozen or more pedi- 

 cels spring from the same base, each bearing a very double 

 ilovver, and altogether forming a cluster like the blossoms of 

 a Cherry. The odor of the white flower strongly resembles that 

 of Violets, but the yellow flowers have little scent. These 

 Banksian Roses are vigorous and rampant growers. On either 

 stfle of the porch of Mills College, near Oakland, California, 

 one of these white flowering plants was set out in 1872, and 

 one of them now has a girth at the ground of forty-four inches, 

 while the other measures forty inches. One of them divides 

 into eleven branches and the other into ten, and at the 

 height of two feet from the surface these branches have an 

 average diameter of three inches. The college building is 

 sixty feet high, but the plants have reached the cornice, and I 

 lately saw a young lady reach out of the fourth-story window 

 and cut off a branch of this season's growth, which measured 

 fifteen feet in length. How much was left on the parent stem 

 could not be determined, as it came out of a dense mass of 

 foliage some distance below. A few years ago the growth 

 made by a branch in one year measured thirty feet, and it is 

 easy to believe that, if proper support were furnished, these 

 Roses would reach a height of at least one hundred feet. 



On the grounds of the same college is a so-called double 

 white Cherokee Rose, a relative of the Banksians, but larger in 

 flower and not entirely devoid of thorns. Its age is unknown 

 as it was on the grounds when the college was built in 1871. 

 An arbor was built by its side twenty feet in diameter, and 

 from this its long shoots droop like those of a Weeping Wil- 

 low. At the ground this tree has a girth of fifty inches, and 

 one of the nine branches into which it divides measures nine- 

 teen inches in circumference a foot beyond where it leaves the 

 parent stem. 



Fruitrale, Calif. H.U.lratt. 



Recent Publications. 



Riverby. By John Burroughs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 

 Boston and New York. 1894. 



To this book, which, according to the preface, contains 

 Mr. Burroughs' last collection of out-of-door papers, he has 

 given the name of his place upon the Hudson, Riverby, 

 where the sketches were written, and where for so many 

 years he has been closely watching the life of nature, 

 which, with the changing seasons, has ebbed and flowed 

 past his door. Most, if not all, of the papers have 

 been published from time to time in various periodicals, 

 but even if they now for the first time saw the light of day, 

 Mr. Burroughs' method of treating the varying features of 

 rural life is too widely known to need more than a word of 

 comment. 



Perhaps it should be observed that the work ranges on a 

 less elevated plane than that occupied by Thoreau or 

 Tefferies, neither of whom Mr. Burroughs fully appreciates. 

 He does not seem to understand the high moral purpose 

 which drove Thoreau into the wilderness, and which, 

 reflected in his writings, made them almost as strong a 

 moral tonic to the readers of his generation as the West- 

 minster catechism had been to an earlier one. Nor does 

 he appear to have much sympathy with the almost 

 tropical fervor of passion which throbs through every line 

 of Jefferies' records of nature. Perhaps he has best charac- 

 terized his gift and its limitations when he speaks of him- 

 self as an "interested spectator of the life of nature." 

 Thus his work appeals to the intellect and the artistic 

 sense rather than to the higher spiritual faculties. This, 

 however, does not detract from its value within its special 

 field, and for years he has been the most popular, as he is, 

 perhaps, the most trustworthy, of the many amateur 



naturalists, whose aim is not so much to give informa- 

 tion upon their special hobbies as to awaken the enthusi- 

 asm of others in their chosen pursuits. Thus they attempt 

 to intermingle something of human interest with their 

 records of the wild life of wood or meadow, or to enhance 

 the value of their narrative by some special grace of style 

 and charm of poetic feeling. 



To a man who writes under such conditions there must 

 come from time to time the temptation to sacrifice scientific 

 accuracy to beauty of style. But from this temptation 

 Mr. Burroughs seems to be singularly free ; nor does he 

 often yield to that other temptation to adorn his tale by 

 some apposite reflection because his readers may expect it 

 of him. His knowledge of the subjects of which he treats, 

 though neither deep nor profound, is singularly varied, 

 and, within certain limits, accurate. It has been obtained 

 by long years of patient and loving observation of rural 

 life in all its phases ; thus he is able always to write as if 

 with his eyes upon the object. His frank confession of 

 ignorance of a new flower, the name and habits of which 

 would be known at a glance by an experienced botanist, 

 betrays his lack of scientific training ; but, on the other 

 hand, of this flower, and of all its kin, Mr. Burroughs can 

 write with a delicate and tender grace that gives delight to 

 hundreds of readers for whom the formal description of 

 the botanist would have no charm. It may be because of 

 this very lack of scientific knowledge that Mr. Burroughs 

 seems to many a veritable high-priest of nature, stand- 

 ing upon the threshold of the temple to reveal the 

 way to the treasures which are enclosed therein. Nor 

 should it be forgotten that his many sympathetic 

 descriptions of Nature's beauty, his bright narrative of 

 bird and animal life, seem to bring the breath of the fields 

 and woods into the den of tired workers, and to the 

 couch of weary invalids. One of the most attractive 

 papers in this volume, " Prairie Notes," is made up almost 

 entirely of extracts from letters written by an invalid lady 

 "confined to her room year in and year out," but who has 

 yet found in this limited space more of interest to see and 

 record than many who have the freedom of a continent ; 

 and certainly the record of the very peculiar manners of 

 her bird visitors makes most delightful reading. 



Other papers are simply records of wanderings through 

 the Heart of the Catskills and Mammoth Cave and the Ken- 

 tucky Blue Grass regions. The sketches entitled "Birds' 

 Eggs " and " Bird Courtship," although hackneyed in sub- 

 ject, are delightfully fresh in treatment. ''Glimpses of 

 Wild Life" and "Eye Beams" will give pleasure to all 

 lovers of wild creatures, furred or feathered ; and " Bird 

 Life in an Old Apple-tree" has many touches of bright 

 humor. " Hasty Observations " and "Talks with Young 

 Observers " are full of helpful suggestion, and should be 

 read carefully by all those who, not content always to use 

 Mr. Burroughs' trained spectacles, feel a praiseworthy 

 desire to see nature through their own eyes. " Lovers of 

 Nature," the most thoughtful of the essays, makes clear 

 the distinction between the reporter of nature, who 

 simply sees things in detail and enumerates them, and the 

 true observer, who, in the multiplicity of details, lays hold 

 instinctively upon those which are significant, disentangles 

 the threads of relations and distinguishes the typical and 

 vital from the mechanical and commonplace. 



It may be that there is in these papers a little less of 

 freshness — a little lack of the spontaneity which gave such 

 a charm to Mr. Burroughs' early writing ; as if, for priest 

 as for layman, there come days when Nature has no word 

 for her worshiper, and the glamour which lay so long on 

 earth and sky had faded into the light of common day. 

 But the record of such moods are few and slight, and do 

 not detract from the wholesome purpose of the book, 

 which, perhaps, may be best expressed by the following 

 quotation : 



We cannot all find the same things in Nature. She is all 

 things to all men. She is like the manna that came down from 

 heaven. " He made manna to descend for them, in which 



