132 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 160. 



violets make a beautiful decoration, when piled in pyramid 

 form on the centre of a dinner-table. They are also equally 

 pretty placed at each plate. 



The so-called " military zone" which encircles Paris is a strip 

 of ground about 2,500 feet in width lying between the outer 

 base of the old fortifications and the populous suburbs which 

 have grown up during recent years. No one is allowed to 

 build upon this strip, and for the most part it is occupied'by 

 market-gardens, which play a large part in supplying food to 

 the great city. As its value for building purposes lias, how- 

 ever, become very great, and as the present military governor 

 of Paris favors the erection of a new chain of forts beyond the 

 suburbs, it is possible that these fertile gardens may soon give 

 place to solid blocks of houses. 



The Journal of Horticulture speaks a good word for Gypso- 

 phila paniculata, not because it is a showy plant, but because 

 of the value of its spray of minute flowers in giving lightness 

 and elegance to bouquets. It is perfectly hardy here, making 

 a long fleshy root, and when once established it will take care 

 of itself for years. There are other kinds of perennial Gypso- 

 philas which are valuable for this same purpose, and the little 

 annual G. muralis is also most useful. This last plant is par- 

 ticularly suitable to use in small vases of Sweet Peas, as it 

 seems to float about the flowers like a mist, and adds to their 

 color an airy grace which can be secured in no other way. 



" If the art of gardening," once wrote the poet Schiller, " is 

 at last to turn back from her extravagances and rest with her 

 other sisters, it is, above everything, necessary to have clearly 

 before you what you require. ... If this is done, there will be 

 found, in all probability, a very good middle course between 

 the formality of French gardening taste and the lawless free- 

 dom of the so-called English style. ... It is certainly tasteless 

 and inconsistent to desire to encompass the world with a gar- 

 den-wall, but very practicable andreasonable to makeagarden, 

 satisfying all the demands of a good husbandman into a whole 

 which shall seem characteristic alike to the eye, the heart and 

 the understanding." 



In the "Thoughts" of the French writer Joubert, published 

 near the beginning of this century, we read the following intel- 

 ligent comment upon the desirability of introducing at times a 

 formal element into gardening art : '* When a regular building 

 commands the garden which surrounds it, it ought, so to say, 

 to radiate regularity by throwing itself round itself to all dis- 

 tances whence it can be easily seen. It is a centre, and the 

 centre ought to be in harmony with all points of the circum- 

 ference, which is itself nothing but the development of a cen- 

 tral point." There is a little exaggeration in the phrase which 

 follows, yet we have seen instances where it would not be too 

 severe : "Those irregular gardens," says Joubert, " which we 

 call English gardens, require a labyrinth for the dwelling." 



Last week the Judiciary Committee of the Senate of the state 

 of Massachusetts gave a hearing to the advocates of the bill for 

 the Preservation of Beautiful and Historic Places upon which 

 we have before commented. Strong addresses were made in 

 favor of the bill, and it received a hearty endorsement from 

 the Appalachian Club, the State Horticultural Society and 

 many eminent men and women. A letter was read from the 

 poet Whittier, who said : " The movement is made none too 

 soon. Barbarism, vandalism and greed have had their own 

 bad way too long, and have done, and are still doing, irrepara- 

 ble mischief. Access to our seaboard is becoming difficult. 

 Some of our best beaches are desecrated. Poison water gas 

 is killing fine old shade-trees in our villages. It is time to call 

 a halt." 



Special Agent Andrew Cauldwell writes to the Commis- 

 sioner of the General Land Office that the Trustees of the 

 " Kaweah Colony " have been arrested for cutting timber in 

 the Sequoia National Park created under Acts of Congress last 

 year. Owing to the heavy snow-storms no trees have been 

 cut since the first of December, but there is a possibility that 

 operations will be renewed when the snow melts. The Agent 

 has had copies of the rules for the government of these reser- 

 vations posted in conspicuous places on all the roads leading 

 to them, and he promises to use every means in his power to 

 protect them from trespass until a guard from the army can be 

 stationed there. The trial of the arrested trespassers takes 

 place next month, and if they are proved guilty their prompt 

 conviction would probably prevent any further depredation 

 upon the timber of these reservations. 



An English correspondent writes that Rhododendron arbo- 

 reum, R. grande (argenteuni) and R. Nilagericum are now mag- 

 nificently in flower at Kew. The first-named is represented by 



a pyramid of foliage twelve feet high, studded with hundreds 

 of bunches of brilliant crimson flowers; R. grande forms a 

 tall flat-topped shrub or small tree, with large leaves, silvery on 

 the under side, and huge trusses of large bell-flowers, which 

 are rose-red in bud, ivory white when open, with a blotch of 

 dull crimson at the bottom of the bell. R. Nilagiricitm is like 

 R. arboreum, but the flowers are rose-colored. Camellia re- 

 ticulata is again a gorgeous picture of flowers, the fog having 

 made no apparent difference to this species, although the gar- 

 den Camellias have suffered more or less severely from its 

 effects. There is no Camellia equal to this for ornament, all 

 the others looking stiff and artificial in comparison. 



The expression of a desire to own " a small house and a 

 large garden" has been attributed to many writers, but the 

 credit really belongs to Abraham Cowley, who lived from 1618 

 to 1667. In a letter to John Evelyn he wrote : "I never had 

 any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that 

 one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of 

 a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conve- 

 niences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of 

 my life only to the culture of them and the study of nature. 

 But several accidents of my ill fortune have disappointed me 

 hitherto, and do still, of that felicity ; for though I have made 

 the first and hardest step to it, by abandoning all ambitions and 

 hopes in this world, and by retiring from the noise of all busi- 

 ness and almost all company, yet I stick still in the inn of a 

 hired house and garden among weeds and rubbish ; and with- 

 out that pleasantest work of human industry, the improve- 

 ment of something which we call (not very properly, but yet 

 we call) our own. I am gone out from Sodom, but I am not 

 yet arrived at my little Zoar." 



The news comes very unexpectedly that Maximowicz, one 

 of the most judicious and accomplished systematic botanists 

 of our time, and the great authority on the plants of eastern 

 Asia, died in St. Petersburg, where he was the keeper of the 

 Imperial Gardens, on the 16th of last month. His career began 

 many years ago with a long journey in Manchooria, of which 

 he made a careful botanical examination. He published the 

 botanical results of this journey in St. Petersburg in 1859 m a 

 stout quarto volume under the title of Primitce Flora Amu- 

 rensis, with illustrations made from drawings by his own hand. 

 Later, Maximowicz traveled in Japan, where he made large 

 botanical collections which have been distributed among the 

 principal herbaria of the world and have thrown the best light 

 on the flora of that empire, which Maximowicz has studied 

 assiduously for years with the intention of writing a compre- 

 hensive Japanese Flora. A vast amount of preliminary inves- 

 tigation was done toward this work which, however, Maxi- 

 mowicz, overwhelmed with the richness of the collections 

 which for years have been poured in upon him by a multitude 

 of Russian travelers in the little-known regions of central and 

 western Asia and which no one else could work up so well, 

 never saw his way to begin. His labors, however, in this field 

 will lighten the burden of the botanist who undertakes to pre- 

 pare a Flora of Japan and who will find the best sources of 

 information in the critical notes which Maximowicz has pub- 

 lished from time to time since 1866 under the title of Diag- 

 noses Plantarum Novarum JaponicB et Manchurice, and in 

 which he has described many new species of plants and elab- 

 orated many large and difficult genera. Other important 

 works from his pen are monographs of the Rhododendrons, 

 the Hydrangeas and the Buckthorns of eastern Asia. Maxi- 

 mowicz wrote in Latin or German, but he was master of 

 English as well, which, strangely enough, he learned on the 

 Amour River, and the letters with which he favored his Ameri- 

 can correspondents were remarkable for their terseness and 

 accuracy of expression. His death leaves a serious gap in the 

 small group of systematic botanists of the first class. 



Catalogues Received. 



Alfred E. Cole, Plainfield, N. J.; Garden, Field and Flower Seeds, 

 Plants, Bulbs, etc.— W. H. Cornish & Co., Newburgh, N. Y.; Plants, 

 Garden and Flower Seeds.— John Gardiner & Co., 21 N. 13th St., 

 Philadelphia, Pa.; Flower and Vegetable Seeds, Poultry. — G. W. 

 Pressey, Hammonton, N. J.; Hammonton Incubator. — W. C. Jen- 

 nison, Natick, Mass.; Flower Seeds, Hardy Plants, etc. — Fred W. 

 Kelsey, 145 Broadway, New York ; Hardy Trees, Shrubs, etc. — 

 Samuel C. Moon, Morrisville, Bucks Co., Pa.; Ornamental Trees, 

 Plants, Vines, Fruits, etc. — J. C. Vaughan, Chicago, 111. ; Flower 

 Seeds, Spring Bulbs, Hardy Plants. — Thos. S. Ware, Hale Farm Nur- 

 series, Tottenham, London, Eng. ; Hardy Perennials and Alpine Plants, 

 Hardy Climbing Plants, Hardy Florists' Flowers, Pasonies, Hardy 

 Ferns, etc. 



