394 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 182. 



feeling for the beautiful and the picturesque, and a very grace- 

 ful pen. So her book is interesting from end to end, and when 

 we lay it down we feel that, despite all we may have read upon 

 the subject before, she has taught us something fresh and 

 given us another and very charming general impression of 

 the delightful land she describes. 



The first thing she speaks of, after landing at Yokohama, 

 is the colony of florists at the west end of the town, where one 

 finds " toy gardens filled with vegetable miracles ; burlesques 

 and fantasies of horticulture ; dwarf trees, a hundred years 

 old, that could be put in the pocket ; huge single flowers and 

 marvelous masses of smaller blossoms ; Cherry-trees that 

 bear no cherries ; Plum-trees that bloom in midwinter, but have 

 neither leaves nor fruit ; and Roses — that favorite flower which 

 the foreigner brought with him — flowering in Californian pro- 

 fusion." And from here on we read so continually of the skill 

 of the horticulturist and the passionate love of the people for 

 flowers that once more we feel, as other writers had already 

 made us feel, that if Japan is the land of art it is still more dis- 

 tinctively the land of flowers. At Yokohama "a large business 

 is done in the exportation of Japanese plants and bulbs encased 

 in a thick coating of mud, which makes an air-tight case to 

 protect them during the sea-voyage. Ingenious Fern-pieces 

 are protected in the same way. These grotesque things are 

 produced by wrapping in moist earth the long woody roots of a 

 fine-leaved variety of Fern. They are made to imitate dragons, 

 junks, temples, boats, lanterns, pagodas, bells, balls, circles 

 and every familiar object. When bought they look dead. If 

 hung for a few days in the warm sun and occasionally dipped 

 in water, they change into feathery green objects that grow 

 more and more beautiful, and are far more artistic than our 

 own conventional hanging basket." 



Mrs. Scidmore makes a novel suggestion when, after recog- 

 nizing the fact that the Japanese are the foremost landscape- 

 gardeners in the world, giving their genius "equal play in an 

 area of a yard or a thousand feet," she says that " a Japanese 

 gardener will, doubtless, come to be considered as necessary 

 a part of a great American establishment as a French maid or 

 an English coachman. From generations of nature-loving 

 and flower-worshiping ancestors these gentle followers of 

 Adam's profession have inherited an intimacy with growing 

 things, and a power over them, that we cannot even under- 

 stand. Their very farming is artistic gardening, and their 

 gardening half necromancy." 



Near Yokohama is the little village of Kawana, whose head- 

 man has a famous collection of Chrysanthemums, the goal of 

 many autumnal pilgrimages. His great thatched house, in a 

 courtyard, is faced in front by rows of mat-sheds, " covering 

 the precious flowers that stand in files as evenly as soldiers, 

 the tops soft masses of great frowsy, curly-petaled, wide- 

 spreading blooms, shading to every tint of lilac, pink, rose, 

 russet, brown, gold, orange, pale yellow and snow-white. It 

 was there that we ate a salad made of yellow Chrysanthemum 

 petals, most aesthetic of dishes. The trays of golden leaves 

 in the kitchen of the house indicated that the master enjoyed 

 this ambrosial feast habitually, and, perhaps, dropped the 

 yellow shreds in his sake cup, to prolong his life and avert, 

 calamities, as they are warranted to do." Not far away is 

 Sugita, where the Plum-trees bud in January and blossom 

 gradually, so that "the last week of February finds the dead- 

 looking branches clothed with clouds of starry white flowers." 

 Around the thatched roof of an old temple stand Plum-trees 

 covered with blossoms of various colors, white, pale pink, 

 yellow, rose or deep carnation-red, and "just outside the 

 temple door is a Plum-tree whose age is lost in legend. Its 

 bent and crooked limbs and propped-up branches sustain a 

 thick-massed pyramid of pale rose-pink. The outer boughs 

 droop like a Weeping Willow, and their flowers seem to be 

 slipping down them like rosy rain-drops. Poets and peers, 

 dreamers and plodders, coolies, fishermen and the unspiritual 

 foreigner, all admire this lovely tree, and its wide arms flutter 

 with poems in its praise " ; for, as Mrs. Scidmore remarks, 

 " spring poetry " is not a drug in Japan, and the trees them- 

 selves gladly accept the shower of manuscripts annually pro- 

 duced in their honor. We cannot follow all her descriptions 

 of the flower festivals of a Japanese spring, when, as our 

 readers have often been told, the whole population turns into 

 the suburbs for merry-making, philosophers and statesmen 

 leave their labors to journey to some famous garden, perhaps 

 a three days' trip away, and the newspapers print daily bulle- 

 tins to tell how the blossoms are progressing. But, she says, 

 fair as the spring days are, the autumn, when an Indian sum- 

 mer lasts sometimes four months in unbroken loveliness, is 

 equally attractive. When the Maple-leaves begin to turn, 

 " autumnal Japan is the typical earthly Paradise." 



Near the Ikegami temples the priests display with pride a 

 Moutan, or Tree Peony, " now three hundred years old, whose 

 solid trunks and wrinkled bark uphold a multitude of stately 

 blossoms." And when these bloom, and Azaleas of varied 

 colors crowd every garden and line the river-banks, then, too, 

 the Fuji, or Wistaria, is in blossom, " and at the Kameido tem- 

 ple makes an eighth wonder of the world. Every householder 

 has his Wistaria-trellis, generally reaching out as a canopy 

 over some inlet, or, as at Kameido, forming the roofs of the 

 open-air tea-houses edging the lake. . . . Blossoms two, and 

 even three, feet long are common, and only a great swaying 

 tassel, four feet in length, draws a 'Naruhodo!' (wonderful!) 

 from the connoisseurs." The great objects of wicker-work, 

 clothed completely with Chrysanthemum-blossoms which 

 amaze every traveler, are described at length by Mrs. Scid- 

 more, who says that, in addition to single forms of men and 

 beasts, one sees " whole mountain-sides of flowers, with 

 water-falls of white blossoms spreading into floral streams, and 

 Chrysanthemum women leading Chrysanthemum horses rid- 

 den by Chrysanthemum men across Chrysanthemum bridges. 

 Gigantic flowers, microscopic flowers, plants of a single blos- 

 som, single plants of two hundred blossoms, have Bamboo 

 tents to themselves" at the shows where these figures are ex- 

 hibited ; and their special attractions are as loudly proclaimed 

 as the charms of fat women and skeleton men in the side- 

 shows of American fairs. 



A little description of the " Maple-leaf Club-house," near the 

 Shiba temples, well shows the feeling of the Japanese for artis- 

 tic decoration. Here there was a "long low room, usually 

 divided into three by screens of dull gold paper. One whole 

 side of this beautiful apartment was open to the garden be- 

 yond a railed balcony of polished cedar, and the view across 

 the Maple-trees and dense groves of Shiba to the waters of the 

 bay was enchanting. The decorations of the club-house re- 

 peat the Maples that fill the grounds. The wall-screens are 

 painted with delicate branches, the panels above the screens 

 are carved with them, and in the outer wall and balcony-rail 

 are leaf-shaped openings. The dresses of the pretty nesans, 

 the crape cushions on the floor, the porcelain and lacquer 

 dishes, the sake bottles and their carved stands, the fans and 

 bonbons, all display the Maple-leaf." On another page we 

 read that even the charcoal under the tea-kettle is an artistic 

 object, being twigs of Azalea charred and coated with lime 

 without injury to their delicate forms. 



In the chapter devoted to the theatre we find flowers again 

 playing a prominent part. The actors enter the stage by two 

 long raised walks through the auditorium, broad enough to 

 accommodate horses and jinrikishas ; these walks are called 

 hana michi, or flower-walks, " and as a popular actor advances 

 his way is strewn with flowers." Garden, forest and landscape 

 effects are made on the stage " by using potted trees and 

 shrubs uprooted for transplanting. The ever-ready Bamboo 

 is at hand, and the tall Dragon-grass and the scene-painters 

 produce extraordinary illusions in the backgrounds and 

 wings." But we should never end if we tried to extract all the 

 suggestive passages by means of which Mrs. Scidmore paints 

 the love of the Japanese for flowers. We can only recom- 

 mend her book to our readers as containing not only many 

 more such passages, but delightful descriptions of scenery 

 and sympathetic accounts of the people who live among these 

 marvels of beauty, and have themselves produced so many of 

 them. 



Bulletin No. 93 of the Agricultural Experiment Station con- 

 nected with the University of California is devoted to the 

 investigation of different varieties of Oranges and Lemons 

 grown in that state. The purpose of the investigation has 

 been to show in a comprehensive way the composition of the 

 leading varieties of these fruits, as they are grown in the dif- 

 ferent Citrus regions, and this is of great value to cultivators 

 inasmuch as it shows the influence of various conditions of 

 soil and climate upon the product of the groves, and also 

 gives information as to the appropriate fertilizers to be used 

 in each case. The physical data — that is, the per cent, of rind, 

 pulp, juice and the like — are of interest from a commercial 

 standpoint because they show the true quality of the fruit. 

 The difference between an orange or a lemon which has such 

 a thickness of rind and such a percentage of pulp and juice 

 as characterize the best kinds of these fruits, and one whose 

 weight is more than one-third rind and more than one-quarter 

 dry pulp, is very apparent. And yet such differences exist. 

 Besides this, although fruit is generally considered a pure 

 luxury, consumers may find much valuable knowledge from 

 studying the relative food-values of different varieties. The 

 nourishing portions, which are especially shown in the saccha- 



