242 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 170. 



The Swamp White Oak is a common tree in some parts 

 of the country, especially in eastern New England and in 

 New Jersey, and in some parts of Pennsylvania. It is 

 found usually with the Swamp Maples and the Tupelo, the 

 White Ash and the Shellbark Hickory, and south of New 

 England with the Pin Oak {Quercus palustris) and the 

 Liquidambar. It grows occasionally to a great size. 

 Individuals, a hundred feet high, with trunks seven or 

 eight feet in diameter, can be found ; such specimens are 

 rare, however, and it is not usual to see this tree more 

 than half this size. The greatest Swamp White Oak of 

 which any record has been preserved is known as "The 

 Wads worth Oak." It stood on the intervale of the Genesee 

 River in western New York, on the Wadsworth estate, 

 where many large Swamp Oaks still exist. Mr. S. B. 

 Buckley published, many years ago, a note on this tree 

 in the American Journal of Science and Arts, from which it 

 appears that in July, 1851, when he visited it, the trunk 

 varied little in size from the ground to the branches, and 

 that it had an average circumference of twenty-seven 

 feet. Its smallest circumference was twenty-four feet. 

 " It was situated in a pasture, and the ground was bare 

 and hard beneath it from the tramping of cattle and vis- 

 itors. The big tree seems fated soon to die." The predic- 

 tion, unfortunately, came true, and a few years later this 

 tree, the pride of all the country round, was under- 

 mined and washed away by the gradual changing of 

 the bed of the river near whose banks it had stood for 

 centuries. 



The Swamp White Oak is rarely planted. It bears trans- 

 planting, however, better than most White Oaks, and com- 

 paratively large specimens can be moved if care is taken 

 in the operation. It is better, however, as it is in the case 

 of all White Oaks, to plant the acorn or a small seedling 

 where the tree is to grow permanently. Transferred to 

 upland the Swamp White Oak grows rapidly and thriftily, 

 although it is not probable that it will make a very large 

 or long-lived tree, except in deep, moist soil in the neigh- 

 borhood of streams or swamps. When such positions are 

 available there is no better tree to plant, and when the 

 Swamp White Oak is found growing naturally it will repay 

 the small amount of care and labor required in cutting 

 away any less valuable trees which encroach upon it and 

 interfere with its characteristic development. 



The western Arbor-vitae, of which a portrait was pub- 

 lished in these columns a few weeks ago, seems des- 

 tined to disappear from the face of the earth if the shingles 

 made from the wood of this tree continue to grow in popu- 

 larity as rapidly as they have in the last two or three years. 

 Nearly a hundred mills devoted exclusively to making 

 shingles from the Red Cedar, as the western Arbor-vitaa is 

 called, have recently been erected in western Oregon, and 

 large quantities of the shingles are manufactured also by 

 hand and by machines attached to saw-mills. It has been 

 found that these shingles are very durable, and that prac- 

 tically the action of the elements alone has little effect on 

 them ; and they are now supplanting the Pine shingle of 

 Michigan, the Cypress shingle of the south and the Redwood 

 shingle of California. They are sent all over the United 

 States, the transcontinental traffic companies fostering the 

 industry by advantageous rates ; and large numbers, 

 especially those made by hand, are sent to the Hawaiian 

 Islands and to other Pacific ports. 



The combined daily product of the fifty shingle-mills 

 controlled by the Northern Pacific Consolidated Shingle 

 Company is said to be 3,500,000 shingles, and probably as 

 many more are made from this wood in Oregon and Wash- 

 ington by individuals and in mills uncontrolled by this com- 

 pany. The supply of this timber is still large, but the region 

 where the western Arbor-vitas flourishes is not exten- 

 sive, and it is only a matter of time when the last of 

 these trees will have fallen under the axe of the timber- 

 cutter. 



Ivy in an Old French Garden. 



THE article recently published in these pages, on the Renais- 

 -*- sance Colonnade in the Pare Monceau, may well have 

 recalled to many readers memories of other French parks and 

 gardens where Ivy is most beautifully used. One such picture 

 is especially vivid in my own mind, although it was received 

 in the immediate vicinity of the great cathedral of Chartres, 

 where, one might easily suppose, architectural pictures would 

 crowd out all besides. 



When we stand in front of the splendid sculptured porch 

 which furnishes the north transept of the cathedral we have a 

 glimpse off to the left, through a huge ornamental iron gate, 

 of a garden shadowed by lofty graceful trees. Perhaps it is 

 not always possible to pass this barrier, for we were told that 

 the Bishop, who had recently died, was old and cross, and per- 

 mitted no one to come within sight of the windows of his 

 palace. But when we were at Chartres this unchristian Bishop, 

 fortunately, was dead, and his successor had not yet arrived. 

 So we got into the garden, not, indeed, through the gate of 

 honor, but by a little side entrance at the further end, near the 

 south-east corner of the church. Entering at this point, how- 

 ever, our first view of the quaint, delicious, out-of-the-world 

 spot was all the more delightful. 



The garden forms a long narrow rectangle, lying, like the 

 cathedral and the streets beyond it, high above the more east- 

 ern portions of the town. At the end where we stood, and all 

 along the eastern side, one looked over a stone parapet far 

 down a massive wall into streets and court-yards, and far above 

 picturesque masses of roofs and a winding little river to the 

 distant hills. Above the other side, to the west, towered the 

 apse of a great chapel which is attached to the end of the 

 cathedral ; and at the further end of the garden stretched the 

 white fagade of the episcopal palace, with a terrace running in 

 front of it, a few beds of flowers close beneath, and long rows 

 of clipped shrubs in pots. And this was seen between two 

 rows of great ancient trees, whose branches almost met over- 

 head and whose trunks were almost concealed by thick shrub- 

 beries, while all the space between them was filled by a quiet 

 expanse of grass. The paths which lead from one end of the 

 garden to the other lie outside these trees and shrubberies, 

 close to the parapet on the one side and close to the chapel on 

 the other. No line of gravel or bed of flowers breaks the har- 

 monious simplicity of the central area. The trees are not 

 planted with formal regularity, though the canopy of their 

 foliage has become uniform and symmetrical ; and one almost 

 forgave the selfish isolation of the defunct Bishop, reflecting 

 that, perhaps, had he cared more for company, he would have 

 instructed his gardener to trim up the shrubs which now grew 

 in beautiful luxuriance, trailing their branches on the rather 

 rankly growing grass. It was a picture of the utmost beauty, 

 and if it looked as though no human hand had touched it for 

 many years, this only increased its poetical charm and added 

 that touch of pathos which always seems to befit the neighbor- 

 hood of a great ancient church. 



But what I wanted especially to explain was, that the final 

 finishing touch of beauty was given by the luxuriance of the 

 Ivy which ran riot in almost every part of the garden, yet in 

 its wildest freaks seemed to have been guided by the hand of 

 some non-human artist. It clambered up the trunks of the 

 great trees until it clambered out of sight among their own 

 foliage. It wove each trunk to the stems of the shrubs be- 

 neath it, and then it ran out in long festoons and streamers 

 amid the grass until it was impossible to say where the shrub- 

 .beries ended, where the lawn began. Beautiful, indeed, were 

 the graceful garlands it wove, and beautiful the contrast of 

 their dark shining green with the paler green of the shrubs 

 and the grass. Admiration changed at last to envy, thinking 

 what one would give in an American country home for a 

 growth of Ivy like this, planted, perhaps, a hundred years ago 

 (I should imagine this to be about the age of the garden, as it 

 is not formal in design), and growing since with only shade, 

 dampness and a fertile soil to dictate its course. One felt that 

 such a place as this ought to be seen, to be enjoyed, to be 

 used. And yet, had it always been used and enjoyed, had its 

 most recent owner been something different from a nervous, 

 ecclesiastical recluse, would its pathetic loveliness have so 

 enchanted the eyes of our lucky band of tourists ? 



New York. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm 

 and pleasant, it werean injury and a sullenness against Nature 

 not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing 

 with heaven and earth. 



JohnjWilton. 



