Afrij, 8, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



157 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 

 Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1891. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Editorial Articles : — A Botanic Garden for New York 



Pruning; Slirubs 



The Colonnade in Hie Pare Monceau, Paris. (With figure.) 



Winter Studies of the Pine Barren Flora of Lake Michigan. — I..E. J. Hill. 



How We Renewed an Old Place.— II Mrs. J. H. Rabbins. 



New or Little Known Plants:— Phvllanthus pallidifolius. (With figure.) 



New Orchids '. R- A. Rolfe. 



Cultural Department :— Some American Oxalis IV. E. Endicott. 



Odontoglossum nebulosurn John Weathers. 



Zonal Pelargoniums for Winter Blooming IV. Tricker. 



The Best Chrysanthemums in England J. N. G. 



Ipomsea pandurata ..O. O. 



Tomatoes under Glass C. IV. Mathews. 



The Forest : — Prairie Forestry and the Timber Culture Law. — I., 



Professor Charles A. Keffer. 



Correspondence : — Notes on Nomenclature George B. Sudworth. 



The Western Arbor-vitas George M. Dawson. 



Exhibitions :— The Boston Spring Flower Show 



Recent Publications 



Notes 



Illustrations :— Phyllanthus pallidifolius, Fig. 29 



View in the Pare Monceau, Paris, Fig. 30 



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X 1 



A Botanic Garden for New York. 



k HE educational equipment of a modern city of metro- 

 politan pretensions, as has been pointed out more 

 than once in these columns, cannot be considered com- 

 plete without a public garden, administered by a man of 

 science in a scientific spirit, as a station of scientific 

 investigation and public instruction. These views have 

 gained a foot-hold in the community, and there is, at this 

 writing, every prospect that the bill "to provide for the 

 establishment of a Botanic Garden, a Museum and Ar- 

 boretum in Bronx Park " will be enacted by the present 

 legislature, it having been passed successfully through all 

 the preliminary steps. By this bill the park commissioners 

 of the city of New York are directed to set aside 250 acres 

 for a private association which asks to be incorporated to 

 carry on the garden. The purpose of the association is to 

 establish and maintain a Botanic Garden, Museum and 

 Arboretum for the collection and cultivation of plants, 

 flowers, shrubs and trees ; for the advancement of botani- 

 cal science and knowledge, the prosecution of original 

 researches in botany and kindred subjects, for affording 

 instruction in these subjects, and for the exhibition of 

 ornamental and decorative horticulture and gardening ; 

 for the entertainment, recreation and instruction of the 

 people. In the list of the incorporators appear the names 

 of some of the most intelligent and public-spirited, and 

 some of the wealthiest men in this city ; and it is safe to 

 say that, if they are thoroughly in earnest in their desire to 

 bestow upon the city a great botanical establishment, and 

 if they realize what such an establishment should be, there 

 need be no serious anxiety for its future. 



The site selected for the proposed garden is an excellent 

 one ; the. territory it provides is ample, its surface is 

 pleasantly varied, and its situation has the advantage of 

 being near enough to the centre of population to be readily 

 accessible, and, at the same time, sufficiently remote to be 

 beyond the injurious influences of the vitiated atmosphere 

 of the city. The corporation is to raise the sum of 



$250,000, with which to establish the garden, and when 

 it has clone this the park commissioners of the city arc to 

 expend a sum, upon which the income is $15,000, in pre- 

 paring museums, herbarium buildings, lecture halls and 

 structures for the cultivation of exotic plants, and to con- 

 struct and maintain the drives through the garden and 

 arboretum, and provide for their policing. 



The sum which the city is asked to expend on buildings 

 seems ample for many years at least, but if the general 

 excellence of the plan is to be criticised at all it is in the 

 meagre amount which the new corporation is expected to 

 expend. The city is to build and maintain roads and to 

 spend $400,000 or $500,000 in providing buildings, but 

 when this is done the corporation will hardly be in a posi- 

 tion, with an income of only $10,000, to carry on and 

 gradually develop a great herbarium, library and museum, 

 to plant an arboretum, to stock greenhouses with repre- 

 sentatives of the tropical flora of the world, to establish 

 gardens of hardy perennial and annual plants, to keep up 

 rock-gardens and shrubberies, water-gardens and bog-gar- 

 dens, and all the other departments of a modern botanical 

 establishment. 



A botanical garden is a museum, and, like all mu- 

 seums, its value depends on the capacity of the man 

 who controls it; it is useful or inefficient in propor- 

 tion as its head understands the true aim of a museum and 

 has the patience and executive force to carry out his ideas. 

 The man who is equipped to organize a garden in this city 

 which is eventually to occupy an area of 250 acres, and is 

 to place it in such a position among the scientific estab- 

 lishments of the world that its claims and importance will 

 be recognized, is not easy to find ; and he will be able to 

 command a salary which will make a large hole in the 

 income of the fund of $250,000. The gradual building up 

 of a herbarium and library, the heart and brain of every 

 scientific garden, and their administration will consume the 

 rest, so that unless a much larger sum of money is pro- 

 vided than the promoters of this scheme now seem to have 

 in mind, there is great danger that the garden will lan- 

 guish, and that those persons now most interested in it 

 will become discouraged. We say this not to add in any 

 way to their discouragement, but only to emphasize what 

 we have said before — that the establishment of a great 

 botanical garden is a serious and difficult undertaking. A 

 garden of this sort is one of the most complicated things a 

 man can be called on to manage ; it costs a great deal of 

 money, its growth must be slow, and those who plan such 

 an establishment and labor for it in its inception cannot 

 hope to gather the fruits of their labor. Art is long and 

 the span of human life is short. But it is one of- the most 

 hopeful signs of our civilization that men occasionally ap- 

 pear who are really unselfish and are willing to work for 

 the public good without hope of great reward and 

 without expectation of seeing their labors bear fruit in 

 immediate tangible results. The man who lays the foun- 

 dation of the great garden which is now contemplated, and 

 which we believe our children will live to see firmly estab- 

 lished in the Bronx Park, will be a man of this character. 

 It was such a man who came to Kew T Gardens just fifty 

 years ago ; and since it is by Kew that the promoters of 

 botanical establishments are accustomed to measure their 

 ambition, it will be useful to explain in a few words what 

 Kew is and why it has become what it is. 



Fifty years ago the British Government, principally at 

 the solicitation of the then Duke of Bedford, a man famous 

 in his time for his enlightened enthusiasm in gardening 

 which made Woburn Abbey one of the great gardens of 

 England, determined to convert the old gardens and 

 pleasure-grounds surrounding the royal palace at Kew 

 into a public botanical establishment. Sir William Hooker 

 was invited from Glasgow to manage it. He brought with 

 him a European reputation as a botanist, unflagging zeal, 

 industry and enthusiasm, a fund of sound Scotch common 

 sense, the friendship and confidence of all naturalists, and 

 the largest botanical library and herbarium which had at 



