September 9, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



43i 



would not have been a heavy "grade on the whole route. 

 Instead of this the highway has been placed variously over 

 the hills, on the hill-sides and in the valley, so that which- 

 ever way one goes it is always up or down hill. All the prod- 

 uce not consumed in the township has, during a century and 

 a half, been hauled over this dreadful road. The tax that this 

 unskillfully constructed road has entailed upon the several 

 generations that have lived in the township has, of course, 

 been enormous. And the roads are not merely badly laid 

 out ; they are wretchedly built and maintained. Yet the 

 people have always had at hand the best kind of material to 

 make good roads, for the surface of the fields is covered with 

 stones which need only a little breaking up to be just what is 

 needed. And then there is limestone in abundance all about, 

 and gravel too. For many years past the township has 

 levied a tax of $1,600 each year for repair of the roads. 

 Only about one-third of this amount is paid in money. The 

 rest is paid in labor, and that, too, at the rate of one dollar and 

 a half per day, when the prevailing rate of pay for much 

 harder work is only one dollar and a quarter per day. 

 When the farmers have finished their spring plowing and 

 planting they go out on a kind of picnic frolic on the road. 

 They plow up all the grass along the sides of the road and put 

 the sods and muck from the ditches into the centre of the road, 

 and very carefully throw all the small stones up against the 

 fences on either side. I need not tell what the consequence 

 of this is. When the weather is wet the roads are six inches 

 deep with a heavy and adhesive mud ; when the weather is 

 dry, as it is apt to be in summer, the roads are fetlock deep 

 in dust. What should go on the roads, so as to make them 

 hard, is left lying loosely in the fields ; and what, if put upon 

 the fields, would make them rich and fruitful is put in the 

 roads to hinder traffic." This last epigrammatic, but most 

 veracious, sentence might well be printed as a warning and 

 posted up in most of our village neighborhoods, for, as Mr. 

 Speed explains, "I have described the system of my own" 

 township, because I am sure the same system prevails in 

 many other localities." Then he adds: "In the whole town- 

 ship there is not a rich man, and there are not more than two 

 or three who are moderately prosperous. Nearly every farm 

 is mortgaged, very many up to their full value, while each 

 recurring census shows that the population is getting smaller. 

 And this is only thirty miles from New York, and in a section 

 for which Nature has done the most liberal things. . . . The 

 farmers say that their lack of prosperity is due to an absence 

 of railroad facilities. I am sure that if they had ever had good 

 highways, or had even spent with any kind of wisdom and 

 judgment the money each year levied for roads on the high- 

 ways as they exist, they would not have felt the want of rail- 

 ways as they do." Truly, in the words which Mr. Speed 

 quotes from Professor Shaler, "if we take the misapplied ex- 

 penses of our country ways, and if we count at the same 

 time the mere social disadvantages which they bring to the 

 people, it is probable that the sum of the road-tax is greater 

 than that of our ordinary taxation." 



Exhibitions. 

 The Massachusetts Horticultural Society. 



COPIOUS rains and abundant heat have made the gardens 

 of Massachusetts flourish this year, and perhaps a better 

 show of their floral products was never made than that which 

 filled the two halls of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 

 last week in Boston. The fact that only space for plants and 

 flowers could be found, the annual exhibition of fruits and 

 vegetables being postponed until a fortnight later for want 

 of room, shows that the season has been a good one, and 

 that the taste for gardening is increasing in the Bay State. 

 There have been better rich men's flower-shows in Boston, 

 perhaps, with more large specimens of tropical stove-plants 

 and Orchids, but there has never been a better all-round ex- 

 hibition of flowers, or one in which collections of the popular 

 flowers of the masses have been seen in such profusion and 

 of such high quality — a fact which may be taken, perhaps, as 

 a hopeful sign of the broadening tendency of our horticulture. 

 A number of excellent collections of greenhouse plants 

 were shown, it is true, and each contained a large number of 

 well-selected and well-grown clean and healthy young plants, 

 much better adapted to the purposes of decoration, for which 

 these plants are often so well suited, than the enormous speci- 

 mens often found in prize groups in American and European 

 flower-shows. Orchids, it is true, did not appear in great pro- 

 fusion or in great variety, and none of the famous collections 

 were represented ; but even Orchids are not missed from 



such an exhibition as the people of Boston had the opportunity 

 of witnessing last week. 



Special features were large, well-selected and well-arranged 

 collections of the flowers of hardy herbaceous plants from 

 J. W. Manning and Temple & Beard, who now pay much 

 attention to the cultivation of plants of this class, which are 

 every year increasing in popularity. The same firms, and W. 

 C. Strong, staged large collections of coniferous plants in pots 

 in competition for the Hunnewell prizes, the first prize being 

 awarded to Temple & Beard. 



China Asters appeared in force in competition for the 

 special prizes offered by Parker, Wood & Co. Joseph H. 

 White took the first of these prizes, and R. T. Lombard the 

 second, for the best collections of large flowering Asters, 

 one hundred vases, with three flowers in each vase. Japanese 

 Lilies were shown in profusion and of remarkable quality and 

 in great varieties of color. The first prize for these flowers 

 was given to T. C. Thurlow, and the second to William K. 

 Vanderbilt, of Newport, who also received the society's prize 

 for fifty vases of large-flowered China Asters. Prizes offered 

 for Dahlias by J. C. Vaughan, of Chicago, brought out several 

 good collections of fifty vases with not less than twenty varie- 

 ties, the first prize being secured by W. C. Winter, who also 

 obtained the prize for Lilliputian Dahlias. There was a good 

 show of the new French flowering Cannas, of Nasturtiums, 

 and of the other leading garden-flowers of the early autumn. 



The collections of wild flowers of eastern Massachusetts, 

 which are almost always an important feature of the Boston 

 shows, were not wanting, and delighted the lovers of nature 

 as much as the showier inhabitants of gardens. 



The feature, however, which most took the popular fancy 

 was the exhibition of aquatic plants and flowers which filled 

 two large tanks in the upper hall, and which had been sent up 

 from Mr. Simpkins' garden at Yarmouth, where the cultiva- 

 tion of these plants is a specialty and where they are more 

 successfully grown than anywhere else in the United States. 

 Crowds of people, filled with admiration for the strange and 

 beautiful flowers, surrounded the tanks from morning until 

 night, and it is doubtful if a more successful or more attrac- 

 tive exhibit was ever made at any flower-show. One tank con- 

 tained a leaf of the Victoria Regict about six feet across and 

 bearing a vase containing one of its great flowers, and the 

 other a collection of the following Nymphaeas arranged with 

 their leaves : N. Marliacea chromatella, an interesting hybrid 

 with delicate lemon-colored flowers ; N. rubra, N. gigantea, 

 N. dentata, N. odorata rosea, and the Japanese Nelumbium, 

 with a few smaller aquatic plants. 



A number of mantel-piece decorations were set up in coin- 

 petition for the prizes offered by the Gardeners' and Florists' 

 Club of Boston. The first prize was awarded to Bowditch & 

 Long, florists, and the second to Mrs. E. M. Gild, of Medford. 

 The arrangement which was considered the best was com- 

 posed of a great mass of Orchids, Ferns, Lilies, Lapagerias 

 and Palms, which entirely covered not only the shelf above 

 the fire-opening, but the fire-opening itself and the whole wall- 

 area about the shelf. It appeared to us that this arrangement, 

 as well as those of the other competitors, Jacked simplicity, 

 and showed a too evident desire to use as much material as 

 possible, without regard to harmony either of color or form. 

 The flowers used in the first-prize decoration represented, no 

 doubt, a larger money-value than those employed by any of 

 the other competitors, but it is doubtful if it could be consid- 

 ered to have represented as much taste in arrangement as one 

 or two of the others. They were all, however, overdone. A 

 fire-place is made to build a fire in ; if it is not to be used for 

 that purpose, it has no reason for existing. A vase of flowers 

 is an appropriate decoration for a mantel-shelf, or a single 

 spray of some graceful vine may be allowed to break its 

 formal lines ; but any decoration which covers up the entire 

 side of a room at the spot where it is intended to build a fire 

 appears to be excessive, and therefore to be bad art, just as 

 the decoration which loads a dinner-table with masses of 

 heterogeneous flowers, or which finds its expression in the 

 grouping together of innumerable varieties of plants in gar- 

 dens without reference to their fitness for association or 

 without regard to their surroundings, is bad art. 



Mr. George A. Nickerson, of Dedham, took the first prize 

 for six greenhouse and stove plants, his collection containing 

 some remarkably well-grown and well-colored Crotons. The 

 second prize went to Nathaniel T. Kidder, and the third to Dr. 

 C. G. Weld ; Mr. Kidder taking the first prize for ornamental 

 leaved plants, and for the specimen flowering plant with a 

 well-grown and well-flowered Ixora Dixiana. E. W. Gilmore 

 took the prize for six Orchids, and a silver medal was awarded 

 to Mr. George McWilliam for a superb plant of Alocasia San- 



