October 28, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



507 



sight from the house which any one would call a " good speci- 

 men," even of wild growth, yet the groups they form are just 

 what the eye demands ; and not a spot of color breaks the 

 quiet greenness except where some wild flower grows at the 

 edge of the forest or the Sumachs burn along the water's edge. 

 There are very few owners, I fear, who would not be tempted 

 to set out trees of other species than those which naturally 

 grow here, and to "enliven" the far-stretching lawns with 

 ornamental plants and flower-beds. But a single innovation 

 of this kind would ruin the beauty which now exists, and I can 

 fancy no worse fate for Great Hill than to fall into the hands 

 of an owner with "a taste for horticulture." Any one with a 

 taste for Nature, a taste for beauty developed and clarified 

 but not modified by art, must be thoroughly content with it as 

 it is. May the day be far distant when a white-blotched Ne- 

 gundo or a scarlet Geranium shall intrude upon its broad sim- 

 plicity and spoil its thoroughly local character. 



From the foot of the main lawn one looks westward along a 

 shore which curves out into successive points, clothed with 

 forest to their tips, until, afar off, Bird Island Light shows 

 white against the sky. For the most part there is only a 

 narrow pebbly beach, although, about a mile away from the 

 house, there is a long and broad beach of snowy sand. But 

 these little beaches are, to my mind, as attractive as anything 

 at Great Hill. The forest comes quite close to them, and, the 

 soil being somewhat swampy, it is composed of larger trees 

 than those through which the entrance drive conducted us. 

 And in front of the trees, coming boldly down to the edge of 

 the sand itself, are the most luxuriant masses of shrubs and 

 creepers, bright at every season with a changing wealth of 

 blossoms. Here one sees Willows, Alders and Black Alders, 

 Roses and Cat-briers and Beach Plums, Blueberries and 

 Sumachs and Grape Vines, Wild Azaleas and Andromedas 

 and a score of things besides, crowding one another close and 

 crowding as closely as they can to the water's edge, while 

 now and then they break away to surround a tiny bit of 

 genuine swamp, covered with Cranberry-vines. If a gardener 

 would like to see how a shrubbery should look, edging an ex- 

 panse of gravel, he could not do better than come and study 

 these which Nature has planted along the little beaches at 

 Great Hill. 



All this large property is not given up to mere beauty ; but 

 the cultivated tracts and the various farm-buildings are hidden 

 away among the woods, so that one must seek before seeing 

 them ; and the same is true of the water tower, which so often 

 mars the effect of a sea-side estate. For a considerable dis- 

 tance from the shore the woods remain untouched save by 

 the construction of a drive, several miles in length, which 

 follows near the water, rounding the head of Wing's Cove and 

 continuing to the confines of the place. In this third drive 

 we have forest and shore views combined. Now we seem to 

 be in the heart of a broad wood, and the next moment find 

 ourselves between the woods and a wide salt-marsh, or be- 

 tween the woods and the water itself. Some very large Pitch 

 Pines and ancient Tupelos occur in this part of the place, and 

 each tree of the sort was scrupulously respected in laying out 

 the road. As its purpose is merely to show the beauty of the 

 place, not to take us anywhere in particular, directness did not 

 need to be considered. And the same is true of certain little 

 walks which, starting near the house, have also been cut 

 through the woods. A pretty feature, which lies only a few 

 steps away from the main lawn but cannot be discovered by 

 a stranger, so inconspicuous is the "trail" through the tall 

 undergrowth that leads to it, is a "deer-rest," made in imita- 

 tion of those which the deer themselves used to trample out 

 when the forest was wild indeed. It is simply a small circular 

 space which has been freed from everything but grass, above 

 which the trees nearly meet and around which the shrubs, 

 freed from all restraint, have formed, in a couple of years, a 

 high, impenetrable, odorous green wall. The Inkberry had 

 long seemed to me the most beautiful of our native shrubs, 

 but how beautiful it might be I had never realized till I saw it 

 at Great Hill, in some such spot as this. 



I need not speak of the other roads which, for more or less 

 utilitarian purposes, have been cut through the woods at Great 

 Hill, or of the pastures where flocks of sheep are feeding, or 

 of the great meadows grown to hay, except to add that nothing, 

 however utilitarian, has been done without a thought of beauty. 

 There has been no ruthless clearing or cutting. The owner 

 marks every tree that is to be felled, and none is ever felled 

 which has any special claim of size, character or situation to 

 plead in its own behalf. So we see here and there in fields and 

 pastures a large Pine, an ancient Cedar or a particularly sym- 

 metrical Maple ; and I have even been told of one small tract, 

 surrounded by cultivated fields, which remains uncultivated 



because in the autumn the Gentians grow there in especial 

 profusion. There are Cranberry-bogs also at Great Hill, and 

 wild Grapes and Beach Plums in a profusion by which the 

 housekeeper profits ; but while her claims and those of the 

 farmer are respected, Nature's claims are never for a moment 

 forgotten. It hardly need be added that, though there are 

 many workmen at Great Hill, there is no one who calls himself 

 a gardener. 



In praising so highly this place, which I have so often vis- 

 ited with ever-growing delight, I do not, of course, mean to set 

 it up as a model for general imitation. Gardens and gardeners, 

 planted trees and cultivated flowers have their part to play in 

 the world, and it must always be a preponderant part when 

 wild country sites are to be fitted for the summer residence of 

 wealthy people. Yet I do think that it would be well if in 

 sea-shore neighborhoods some such treatment as this which 

 has brought the beauty of this place out of a tangled wilder- 

 ness was adopted. It is adopted, I know, in many small prop- 

 erties ; but Great Hill is remarkable as showing how well 

 fitted it is even to estates of unusual size. Certainly, no other 

 method of treatment could have produced so admirable an 

 effect just here, where the forest already existed with a well- 

 marked character of its own, and where the soil is not very 

 easily persuaded to bear trees of other sorts. The chief beau- 

 ties of Great Hill are its clear local character and its unity. 

 Whether we are traversing the untouched portions of the 

 woodland, following the lovely shore, or surveying the broad 

 expanses of lawn, relieved, but not disturbed, by their Pines 

 and Oaks and Tupelos, and broadly and simply contrasted with 

 ' the encircling belt of woods, there is never a feature which 

 mars the harmony or changes the general character of the 

 spot. It is simply a piece of the Marion country beautified, 

 but not essentially altered ; and this, I believe, whether the 

 gardener has had a part to play in the result or not, is what 

 every country place in every part of the world ought to be. 

 This owner was lucky in finding a spot which he could make 

 habitable and beautiful without a gardener's aid, partly be- 

 cause the unusual, the unexpected, the unconventional is 

 always attractive, but partly also because, when Nature is in an 

 artistic mood, she can do better work than any other artist. 

 But surely, also, the spot was lucky in finding an owner who 

 appreciated his chance and could make the most of it. This 

 he has done, not by starting out with a definite idea of what he 

 " meant to do with the place," but by contenting himself for a 

 time with roughness and incompleteness, living on the place, 

 loving and studying it, and very gradually deciding what the 

 next step should be. And only thus can any good work of art 

 be produced when the materials used are those which Nature 

 supplies, and, consequently, it is impossible to redeem mis- 

 takes once they are perpetrated. 

 Marion, Mass. M. G. Van Rensselaer. 



Artificial Coffee-beans. 

 HTHE manufacture of artificial coffee-beans has, it appears, 

 -*- assumed some importance in this country, and speci- 

 mens of the spurious beans have been sent to Kew by Dr. 

 Brown Goode, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 

 The idea of preparing artificial coffee-beans for the purpose of 

 mixing with the genuine beans is, however, not entirely new. 

 As long ago as i860 coffee-beans, made from finely powdered 

 chicory, were sent to the Kew Museums. "The American 

 beans are supposed to be composed of rye-flour, glucose and 

 water ; they are made to resemble, in size and color, a moder- 

 ately good sample of roasted coffee-beans, and, by the intro- 

 duction of a few genuine beans, are made to possess the 

 aroma of coffee. The modeling is sufficiently good to deceive 

 the ordinary public, but if the product is at all critically ex- 

 amined it is noticed that the groove on the flat surface is broad 

 and shallow, and that it does not extend into the heart of the 

 bean by a long narrow slit as in the real article ; and, also, 

 that there is no trace of the silvery skin at the mouth of the slit. 



The introduction of spurious coffee-beans as an article of 

 commerce in the United States is described in the following 

 article from the New York World, reproduced in the Kew 

 Bulletin : 



"The average bulk of the genuine coffee imported into the 

 United States is 8,000,000 bags, or 180,000,000 pounds, per 

 annum. Experts estimate that fully twenty per cent, of the 

 coffee sold to consumers is bogus, which raises the consump- 

 tion to 216,000,000 pounds. Taking thirty cents per pound as 

 the average retail price, the people of America pay $65,000,000 

 every year for this one article of food, of which $13,000,000 

 is paid for roasted and ground beans, pease, rye, or a 

 manufactured article in no way resembling the Brazilian 

 berry. To this must be added the production and sale 



