290 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 174. 



very few probably are much more than a century old or 

 are large enough to possess any great commercial value. 

 Formerly the wood was much used in ship-building ; and 

 it is interesting to note that Henry May, an English sailor, 

 who was wrecked on the Bermuda Islands in "1593, and 

 who afterward printed the first account of them, escaped 

 with his companions to the banks of Newfoundland in a 

 vessel which they were able to make from the Cedar-wood. 

 This same wood, twenty-seven years later, furnished the 

 material from which Admiral Sir George Somers, who the 

 year before had been wrecked while in command of the 

 "Sea Adventure" on the islands, constructed the vessel 

 which carried him to the relief of the infant colony of Vir- 

 ginia, and in which his body was afterward borne back to 

 his native land. Beautiful and very lasting furniture, too, 

 was once made on the islands from the Cedar-wood, and 

 old cedar chests and cabinets 200 years old and more are 

 still held as heirlooms by the descendants of some old 

 Bermuda families who still live in houses finished with 

 this wood, which grows with age rich and dark in color 

 like old mahogany. 



Two portraits of Bermuda Cedars are printed in this issue. 

 That on page 274 represents the stem of a very old tree 

 standing in the Devonshire churchyard close by the ivy- 

 covered parish church, which resembles in architecture 

 and surroundings one of the little churches of the older 

 Devonshire. The tree, which recalls one of those vener- 

 able Yews of England, hoary with age, and familiar 

 inhabitants of many an English churchyard, probably led 

 to the selection of this particular spot as a place of wor- 

 ship. The tree must have been a very old and large one 

 when the little church was built ; it may well have been 

 standing when human eyes rested on these islands for the 

 first time, and probably it has changed very little in the last 

 200 years. The diameter of the trunk is now fifty-nine 

 inches, and the height of the tree is some forty feet. Only 

 two larger specimens are now known to exist. 



The second view represents the tree as it grows in the 

 moist black soil of the Devonshire marshes, a large tract 

 of ground covered with Cedars of large size and springing 

 from a dense undergrowth of Wax Myrtle, or Myrica, iden- 

 tical with the species so common on our Atlantic sea- 

 board, and of Baccharis, similar to, although distinct from, 

 our sea-board species. Tall specimens of the Bermuda 

 Palm which, next to the Juniper, is the most interesting plant 

 of the islands, appear here and there among the Cedars, and 

 the ground beneath the shrubs is covered with a luxuriant 

 growth of Ferns — with the Bracken (Pteris aquilind) with 

 fronds four or five feet tall, with numerous clusters of the 

 great Marsh Fern {Acrosticum aureum), and with the rare 

 and local Devonshire Marsh Fern (Aspidium Capense). 

 These marshes and their inhabitants are A r ery beautiful, 

 more beautiful, certainly, than any other part of the islands, 

 and as the sunlight plays through their open glades on the 

 pale trunks of the great trees, they offer contrasts of color 

 and afford effects of light and shade which our picture does 

 not convey and which words cannot paint. 



The Lynn Public Forest. 



AN interesting sketch, published in a recent issue of the 

 Lynn Transcript, contains much information relating to 

 the early traditions and uses of the public woods which now 

 form a unique pleasure-ground to that city. One of the things 

 which surprise people visiting the Lynn woods for the first 

 time is the rude stone walls which cross them from Wyoma 

 and Saugus, extending in straight lines for many miles through 

 swamps and over hills. They were built by the Puritan 

 founders of Lynn to protect the live stock of the young settle- 

 ment. To properly understand the motives which induced 

 the great expenditure of time and labor needed in constructing 

 these walls one must consider "the admirable economic sys- 

 tem of land tenure which shaped the early towns. The church 

 was the nucleus about which the planters grouped their dwell- 

 ings. That the houses might be within a convenient distance 

 from the church and from each other, and, at the same time, 

 to foster that spirit of loyalty and independence which springs 



from the ownership of the soil, the Puritans threw away utterly 

 the last traces of feudal holding of lands for services, and dis- 

 tributed home-lots in fee-simple. The Pilgrims at Plymouth 

 tried at first a pure community of lands and of goods; the 

 Puritans of Massachusetts Bay made no such mistake. They 

 decreed every man's house as his castle in a truer sense 

 than Englishmen had known in the Old World. Thus 

 they established convenience to attend church and nearness to 

 each other for safety, and the home became a sacred holding. 

 The Puritans, however, tried the experiment of herding the 

 stock of individuals upon commons held by the towns. This 

 custom grew out of the Puritan reverence for that other chosen 

 people — the children of Israel. Herding in common, but re- 

 taining individual ownership in the stock, besides being a 

 labor-saving device, made the settlers neighborly. The early 

 colonial ^ordinances teem with regulations concerning cattle, 

 corn-fiefds, fences, tolling and banding of cattle, trespass by 

 cattle and swine, damage to cattle by wolves. Cow-herds and 

 shepherds and swine-herds became classes." 



The long walls were built by the common labor of the men 

 for the protection of their stock. The cow-pastures were near- 

 est to the settlements because the cows had to be driven home 

 twice every day to be milked. The horses were carefully 

 watched, and the General Court as early as 1668 passed an or- 

 dinance directing the selectmen of towns to attend to their 

 improvement. The Lynn horse-pasture was north of the 

 present Pine Grove Cemetery, and was well watered by a 

 never-failing spring, which flows as freely to-day as it did two 

 hundred and fifty years ago. The pasture used by the early 

 settlers for their oxen was beyond what is now Glen Louis 

 Pond. Being farthest from the settlement, it was exposed to 

 the ravages of wolves, which abounded in those days, and ne- 

 cessitated the construction of the wolf-pits, which still remain, 

 a striking example to the ingenuity of the early settlers. The 

 Puritans' dread of wolves was only second to their fear of 

 witches, and in 1645 die General Court passed a law by which 

 it was provided that the sum of ten shillings should be paid 

 out of the. county treasury "to any person, English or Indian, 

 who shall kill a wolf within ten miles of any plantation." 



The writer in the Lynn Transcript points out that the " Lynn 

 woods have had three periods of usefulness. Down to 1706 

 they furnished pasturage and timber and shelter to the village. 

 In their second period; covering the life of the town shifting 

 from the pastoral to mechanical pursuits, they were still use- 

 ful, although restricted to furnishing fuel to the inhabitants. 

 As time went on, and cheap coal came in with the ever-advanc- 

 ing density of population, it seemed as if the slaughtering 

 brick-maker and the fire-fiend would render the woods a deso- 

 lation, a desert and a menace to our fair town." 



But a period of greater usefulness has come. The inhabit- 

 ants of cities require pure water, and the people of Lynn have 

 •wisely determined to protect and preserve the abundant sup- 

 ply which still flows from the springs which watered the cattle 

 of the Puritans, and these woods now perform their noblest 

 duty in furnishing the great city with water, oxygen and sylvan 

 beauty for the repose of its inhabitants. 



"The fathers, with their Aryan ways, their patient oxen and 

 their demon wolves, have gone ; the woods which were used 

 first in common, then in severalty, the walls which testified to 

 their energy, and the wolf-pits which note their skill in ma- 

 sonry, are being restored to the common inheritance of their 

 children's children." 



Bristol Pond Bog". 

 n^O most people the word bog does not suggest anything 



ery inviting. On the contrary, it is considered nothing 



1 



but a miry piece of ground where no one would venture^ 

 unless obliged to, and where nothing attractive can be found. 

 This is, no doubt, a correct impression of some bogs, but 

 we have, in New England, bogs and swamps that are as 

 attractive, at certain seasons, in their display of natural scenery 

 as any of the mountain forests. 



In the town of Bristol, Vermont, is what is called Bristol 

 Pond, a small sheet of water fed by mountain brooks and 

 springs, and from which flows a lively little creek. The pond 

 is almost surrounded by bog lands, of which there are several 

 hundred acres, and on the east side, bordering the bog, is 

 Hog's Back, a large foot-hill of the Green Mountains, which 

 extends north and south for a distance of about nine miles. 

 The pond is about a mile long by a third or half as wide, vary- 

 ing, of course, at different points, and very irregular in outline. 

 The depth of the water varies from a few inches to six or ten 

 feet, but under this lies an unfathomed body of thin, soft, peaty 

 mud, about as thick as porridge at its surface, but probably 



