122 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 160. 



It is almost disheartening to feel the necessity of reit- 

 erating these statements which have never been contro- 

 verted and rarely questioned, because all that is said and 

 written seems to exert no actual restraint upon the axes 

 and fires which keep steadily at the work of making bare 

 the slopes and crests of our mountains. But reasonable 

 appeals to reasonable men are never wholly lost. If the 

 state of Pennsylvania had a Forest Commissioner who 

 would do for every drainage basin in the state what Major 

 Raymond has done for a single one, such reports pre- 

 sented year after year to the Legislature could not fail in 

 the end to awaken attention. Every state in the Union 

 has immediate use for some intelligent officer to study its 

 forest-interests and bring the various phases of the forest- 

 problem before the people and their law-makers. This 

 step has already been taken in some states, and the propo- 

 sition is strongly urged in others. In our view, it is a 

 measure which should be at once adopted by all. 



It is a matter of regret that Congress has once more 

 adjourned without passing the bill for the enlargement and 

 protection of the Yellowstone Park-. Up to the very latest 

 moment the friends of the measure, who have been labor- 

 ing for it for eight years, had hopes of its passage. They 

 were anxious to have the bill called up, feeling sure that in 

 the committee of conference the amendment added by the 

 railway lobby would be stricken out ; but in the rush of 

 business at the closing hours they could not command a 

 hearing. The whole matter must now rest till Congress 

 meets again, and meanwhile the great forest-tracts which 

 it was proposed to add to the park will continue to be dev- 

 astated by fires, and the noble game will be slaughtered 

 for their hides by skin-hunters. The value of the park, as 

 it is admitted by every one, would be greatly increased if 

 the head-waters of the streams which pour into it could be 

 protected, if the picturesque valleys and panoramic scenery 

 in the proposed extension could be added to the wonders 

 already within the park, and if the favorite breeding-places 

 of the elk could be saved. But the opportunity to secure 

 all these advantages has again been thrown away by the 

 representatives of the people because the representatives of 

 a corporation demanded some exclusive privileges. 



The Rose-bush of Hildesheim. 



THE town of Hildesheim, which lies on the little river 

 Innerste and now contains about 25,000 inhabitants, is 

 one of the oldest in northern Germany. Episcopal rank was 

 bestowed upon it in the year 835; and Bishop Bern ward, who oc- 

 cupied his chair from 993 until 1022, was a famous architect 

 and worker in many minor artistic crafts, and signs of his 

 handiwork still remain to interest the traveler. During the 

 thirteenth and fourteenth century the town was especially 

 flourishing and important ; it belonged to the Hanseatic 

 League, and retained its title of "free city "until 1803. The 

 Romanesque architecture of the district is very well repre- 

 sented in Hildesheim, and its domestic buildings of later 

 mediaeval and Renaissance times are especially famous, being 

 many in number, rich in type, and little injured by restora- 

 tions. But perhaps the most famous object in the city is the 

 ancient Rose-tree of which we give a picture on p. 127. East 

 of the cathedral lies a two-storied cloister of Romanesque 

 construction ; in the centre of this rises the Chapel of St. 

 Anne ; and against the wall of the apse of this chapel rises the 

 Rose-bush. Local tradition ascribes its planting to Louis le 

 Debonnaire, the son of Charlemagne, who was crowned in 816 

 and died in 840. History does not justify this belief, which 

 would give the Rose-tree an age of over a thousand years ; 

 but it is confidently asserted, on historical grounds, to be 800 

 years old. But the stock we see to-day is not the one that 

 flourished during so many earlier centuries. Late in the last 

 century the Rose died down to the ground, and its present 

 height, about thirty feet, represents the one hundred and ten 

 years of growth from the ancient root. This in itself seems a 

 respectable age for a Rose-bush ; but if its entire life is in- 

 cluded, the Hildesheim tree is certainly the oldest as well as 

 the most famous in the western world. And if an antiquity 

 as great is claimed for others in the Orient, the assumption 

 rests, we must believe, on less well-ascertained facts than 

 those which German historians can cite. 



Chamisso. 

 LEW poets are dearer to the popular heart in any land than 

 ■* is Adalbert von Chamisso in Germany ; and while school- 

 children there learn his ballads as they do those of Schiller and 

 of Uliland, his fame has been carried into other lands by the 

 prose story of Peter Schlemihl, "the man who lost his 

 shadow." But how many people now remember that Cha- 

 misso was not only a poet, but a scientific man of wide 

 accomplishment who added largely to the knowledge of his 

 time, and was the friend and colleague of Humboldt, Johannes 

 Miiller and Ehrenberg ? 



It seems odd, with his patriotic ballads in mind, to learn that 

 Chamisso was born in Champagne, in France. His father was 

 of the noble lineage of Boncourt, and was one of the great 

 throng of emigres whom the Revolution drove to seek new 

 homes in alien lands ; and the boy Adalbert, born in I78i,and 

 brought at a very early age to Berlin, there received his edu- 

 cation and became a page in the royal household. Later he 

 served in the Prussian army, was taken as a prisoner of war 

 to France in 1806, and returned there afterward for brief 

 periods, during one of which he was instructed in botany by 

 the son of Madame de Stael. Even as a child he had shown 

 a strong inclination for the study of nature, and when he again 

 established himself in Berlin at the age of thirty, he entered 

 the university as a student of medicine, worked in the zo- 

 ological museum, investigated electricity and magnetism, 

 as well as mineralogy and geology, and, in short, for three 

 years pursued science with unusual breadth of range and in- 

 tensity of application. In 1815, highly recommended by his 

 teachers, he was appointed to accompany Von Kotzebue on 

 the famous voyage of exploration in the ship Rurik, the ulti- 

 mate aim of which was to discover a north-east passage from 

 the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. This voyage lasted three 

 years, and, though the arctic passage was never attempted, 

 many and varied lands were visited which then were little 

 known to science, including Teneriffe, Brazil, Chili, the Sand- 

 wich Islands and California, as well as numerous points in the 

 far north. The name of Chamisso Islands within the arctic 

 joins with several others to perpetuate the memory of the poet 

 and his companions in this voyage. Under difficulties even 

 greater than those which', fifteen years later, embarrassed 

 Darwin during his voyage around the world, Chamisso, like 

 Darwin, worked diligently in many branches of science while 

 on the Rurik, brought home large and varied collections, and 

 published an account of his experiences in a book, cast in 

 somewhat popular form, called " Views and Observations dur- 

 ing a Voyage of Discovery." In 1818 he was appointed assist- 

 ant in the Botanical Institute at Berlin, and held the office 

 until his death in 1838. In 1835 he became a member of the 

 Academy of Sciences upon the nomination of Humboldt and 

 Kunth. A botanical text-book for schools which he wrote had 

 great success in its time, and a species of plants belonging to 

 the unwilting Amaranths was, in his honor, named Chamissoa 

 by Kunth. 



Chamisso's favorite plants are said to have been those of 

 the water, especially the Po tamo get cc ; but nothing that grew 

 escaped his keen attention, and he distinguished himself dur- 

 ing his very first days on the Rurik by discovering on the 

 English coast near Plymouth a little plant, Centaurea nigre- 

 scens, which no local botanist had noticed. Heavy rains or 

 burning heats prevented him from making the best of his 

 time in certain countries which he visited and where the stay 

 of the ship could not be long ; but nearly the whole flora of 

 the Radak chain was collected by him, and on the coast of 

 California, then almost virgin soil to the botanist, he made 

 many interesting discoveries, including a now familiar flower, 

 which he named for the surgeon of the Rurik — EschscJioltzia 

 Califomica. Seeds of this he brought home, and to him must 

 be traced its introduction into European gardens. So gener- 

 ously did he distribute his collections among his fellow-savants 

 all over Europe that much of the service he rendered to bot- 

 any has never been placed to his credit. But, as has been 

 said, other branches of science — zoology, geology, anthropol- 

 ogy, folk-lore, linguistics, and more besides — likewise engaged 

 his attention ; and he not only collected largely, but thought 

 profoundly and suggested many new theories, in some of 

 which he has been confirmed by the investigations of later 

 days. For example, his theory of " propagation by alternating 

 generations," based on a study of those very low forms of 

 aquatic life called the Salpae, went unheeded when he gave it 

 to the world. But the labors of Steenstrup and Johannes 

 Miiller afterward confirmed it, in so far at least that Steen- 

 strup declared that the honor of having led the way to an 

 understanding of the different methods of generation charac- 

 teristic of the lower organisms belongs "to the accurate and 



