55o 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 195. 



landward side. Much of the area is overgrown with weeds, 

 which, when I was there, were tall enough to conceal a group 

 of artists who were sketching the sea view, which nothing can 

 spoil. The place might be made much more attractive and 

 valuable to the people who have a right to go there, especially 

 to the women and children, and I think the act of incorpora- 

 tion should be so amended as to require the association to 

 take reasonable care of the property and to keep it in a neat 

 and orderly condition. 



There is no common or public holding in the region which 

 is still marked Beverly Common on the maps, nor has there 

 been in any recent time. I think this reproduction and per- 

 petuation of old terms by successive map-makers is probably 

 the source of the popular notion or impression that there are 

 still considerable areas of common or undivided town-land in 

 many towns in Massachusetts. The Trustees of Public Reser- 

 vations were made a corporation for the purpose of acquiring, 

 holding and opening to the public " beautiful places and tracts 

 of lands," and if we are to have anywhere a reservation for 

 beauty and the delight of those who love beauty, I know of no 

 place in the state better adapted to such uses than this region 

 of high rocky pasture and encompassing woodland. The dis- 

 tant view is fine in every direction, and the whole of the vast 

 visible landscape is full of character, strong, alluring, tonic and 

 satisfying. It is a place for artists and for people with a de- 

 veloped sense of the beauty and value of fine scenery. Of 

 course, it is good to be out-of-doors almost anywhere, but here 

 there is the inspiration of natural beauty of a vivifying charac- 

 ter, and the consenting soul of " the wide aerial landscape " 

 speaks to the soul of the beholder. I wish the trustees might 

 visit and examine the region, and that lovers of the out-of-door 

 world might explore it and note their impressions regarding it. 



Salem has a pretty common in the most populous part of the 

 city, nine acres of sward with trees encircling it, paths and 

 seats. It is for people on foot only, and is quiet and pleasant 

 for women and children. It is, I believe, the old training-field. 

 2. The Willows, on the shore, said to contain thirty acres or 

 more, adjoining the town farm or almshouse grounds. It is 

 reached by a street-railway from the city, and is resorted to by 

 throngs on summer nights. The area is not so large as it 

 should be, but it is one of the most valuable of all the public 

 holdings on the New England shore, and the cost of maintain- 

 ing it is very small. The annual appropriation for this pur- 

 pose is about $1,200. The rents from eating-houses, etc., 

 amount to $800 a year. The real annual cost to the city is thus 

 only about $400. Yet the people of the adjacent suburb of 

 Juniper Point would like to see this place of resort closed. 3. 

 There is an area of two and a half acres on Liberty Hill, in 

 North Salem, with a few fine trees and a spring of very cold 

 water, but the place is neglected, uncared for and abused. A 

 park or common is needed here, as there is a populous suburb 

 near by which has no other place of resort. When I was there 

 on a hot afternoon in August a party of women and children 

 came up at the same time, tired and thirsty, but a huge dog 

 was laving in the spring, and the children had to wait till the 

 water ran itself clear again. The city's neglect of this valua- 

 ble property is sure to result in its injury and depreciation. 



The region formerly known as Salem Great Pastures was 

 held as common land in early times, but it was all divided into 

 private holdings long ago. Much of it is still used for pas- 

 turage. It is separated into two parts by the occupied and 

 inhabited belt along both sides of the highway leading to Lynn 

 and Boston. It is to the portion on the eastern or shoreward 

 side of this belt that Salem will probably look for the territory 

 for new parks and commons in the future. I could not learn 

 why it is not thought judicious to anticipate these future 

 needs — which, indeed, already impress most observers — and to 

 purchase the land which will be required while it can be ob- 

 tained at small cost. There is much complaint by the work- 

 ing people of Salem that they are of late hunted and driven 

 from all the places along the shore to which, from time im- 

 memorial, they have been accustomed to resort for small pic- 

 nics and excursions and family and society outings. Several 

 members of the police force say they are tired of being sent to 

 drive away little parties of quiet and orderly women and chil- 

 dren at the behest, as it often happens, of persons who have 

 themselves no real title to the lands from which they want all 

 visitors expelled as trespassers. There is need of additional 

 public holdings on the shore in this region ; for a small party 

 to go to The Willows is often about the same as trying to have 

 a picnic in a crowded street or public hall. 



Salem is historically one of the most interesting places in 

 New England. Some of the old houses have been destroyed 

 which should have been preserved, but of course they could 

 not all be kept forever. It costs money to acquire these old 



houses, and to take care of them. To the house in which 

 Hawthorne was born, so I was told, an admission fee of twen- 

 ty-five cents is charged each visitor. The prevalence of the 

 witchcraft delusion here was a most sad and pitiful episode in 

 the town's early history. 



The officers and workers of the Essex Institute and those of 

 the Peabody Academy of Science have done and are doing most 

 useful work in stimulating and extending historical research 

 and in promoting the temper and spirit which make history 

 worth preserving. There are many objects of great interest 

 and value in their museums. Mr. John Robinson, who is treas- 

 urer of the Peabody Academy of Science, has recently written 

 a series of entertaining articles on the trees of the region. It 

 has been published in the Salem Gazette, and it should now be 

 issued in a more permanent form so as to be accessible to the 

 public. Mayor Rantoul expressed much interest in the aims 

 of the Trustees of Public Reservations. 

 Boston, Mass. J. B. Harrison. 



Exhibitions. 

 Chrysanthemums in Boston. 



"DOSTON has never seen such a magnificent display of Chry- 

 -L-' santhemums as those which last week filled the two halls 

 of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. For several years 

 the liberal prizes offered by the society for this now popular 

 flower have brought together very remarkable displays, but 

 all of them have been eclipsed by that of this year. The speci- 

 men plants, perhaps, were no better than the best of Mr. Hun- 

 newell's collection of last year, but there were more high-class 

 plants in this year's exhibition, and the average of the whole 

 was far better than anything seen in Boston before. It is a 

 question, perhaps, whether the modern fashion for big blooms 

 has not destroyed some of the real beauty of the Chrysanthe- 

 mum ; it certainly is a fact which no one with any sense of 

 proportion will be able to dispute that a single spindling stem 

 six or eight feet tall surmounted by one flower is not of itself 

 an object of beauty, however great may have been the skill of 

 the gardener who produced it ; but allowing that size and sub- 

 stance of plants and of flowers is the chief aim of Chrysan- 

 themum-culture, then the Boston show was as remarkable 

 an exhibition of these flowers as the country has ever seen. 

 It should be added, however, that while tall plants which 

 carry a single flower are not objects of individual grace, there 

 is yet one sufficient reason for cultivating some Chrysanthe- 

 mums in this way. When several of these long-stemmed 

 plants are cut and intelligently grouped in a vase, the flower 

 is used to its best effect for decorating large rooms. 



Cut flowers principally decorated the lower hall, and potted 

 plants the upper, and in each the arrangement was excellent, 

 both in the general effect produced and in the opportunity 

 given to examine the different specimens in detail. The prin- 

 cipal contest was in the competition for the prize offered for 

 twelve specimen plants, as it has been for some time an open 

 secret in the neighborhood of Boston that two of Mr. Hunne- 

 well's sons were making extraordinary efforts to produce the 

 best plants for this class. They had no serious competition, 

 and Mr. Walter Hunnewell, whose plants last year were the 

 admiration of every one who saw them, secured the first prize, 

 and Mr. Arthur Hunnewell the second. The first-prize group 

 consisted of short broad plants, with the exception of one 

 splendid specimen of Louis Boehmer, the handsomest plant 

 in the whole exhibition, all in the very pink of condition, but it 

 seemed to us not quite as good, on the whole, as the plants 

 which took the first prize last year. Mr. Arthur Hunnewell's 

 plants were taller, some of them more than six feet high, but 

 they lacked something of the finish which always charac- 

 terizes Mr. Hatfield's Chrysanthemums. 



Of the seedlings, which were shown in great numbers, few 

 were particularly distinct, and it is plainly difficult to originate 

 anything much better than what already exists in any of the 

 strains which our florists are working. Of the seedlings displayed 

 this year for the first time it is needless to speak, as very few 

 of them stand the test of a second season, and no Chrysanthe- 

 mum is worth propagating until it has flowered during at least 

 two years. Of such plants there was nothing finer than A. H. 

 Fewkes' Beacon, an immense white flower, fully ten inches 

 across, and very solid and compact. It belongs to the in- 

 curved Japanese section, in which, also, were the following : 

 Mrs. Jerome Jones, a large white flower, raised by H. A. Gane, 

 Esq., of West Newton, Massachusetts; Pitcher & Manda's 

 Harry May, and an excellent bronze yellow flower named 

 Walter Hunnewell by its raiser, Mr. J. T. Hatfield. A very fine 

 specimen of the last, and perhaps the most interesting plant in 



