1894.] Editorials. i 399 
EDITORIALS, 
—Tuose who hold place in our municipal government are neces- 
sarily “men of affairs,” and are very rarely possessed of the love of 
nature. Their idea of a tree is primarily based on its market 
value, but if it be necessarily ornamental by reason of its position, 
their idea of beauty consists in truncated branches with a corone of 
sprouts surrounding their extremities. Forest is in their view only 
attractive when it is cleared of smaller growth, and grass sown in its 
stead ; and thickets of shrubs and vines are necessarily to be burned. 
Hills must be leveled, ravines must be filled up, and nature’s slopes 
must be replaced by dressed stone walls. At all this the lover of 
nature rebels for various reasons. Such interference with natural pro- 
cesses produces utter poverty, and wood and field are robbed of one of 
their charms, variety. Ina park which receives such treatment, where 
ten species of trees grew, but one remains. From the hillsides the native 
shrubs have disappeared, and on the open, which was once a bed of 
flowers, there remains but the monotonous grass, reduced if possible to 
asingle species. Such treatment destroys the haunts of bird and 
insect, and lays open the few venturesome wild things that remain, to 
the persecutions of the rabble, who would never otherwise know of their 
Presence. It is important that this official vandalism should never 
enter our publié parks, or that it should be speedily suppressed when- 
ever it shows itself. Our parks are for the instruction of the public 
48 well as for their relaxation. Stone walls and graded paths abound 
în the city, and mutilated trees line the streets. Let the parks be 
Pictures of the great nature with its energies untrammeled and its pro- 
“esses in view of every citizen who wanders in their shades or repose 
on their banks. Let its forest teach the lesson of decay as well as of 
birth and life, and abeste profanes, hands off, of wonders that man 
Cannot imitate or improve upon. 
ES iO ola th SI MC Sa i a 
aca ye ba k= ee ee 
| _ —Voeur is a form of automatism, and it is natural to man, since it 
iY iS always easier to imitate than to create. There are vogues in naming, 
3 vogues in studying, and some other kinds of vogues to which natural- 
| ists are liable, as vogues affect other men of other professions. babs 
are moved to these reflections by the observation of the vogue which 
i has been enjoyed for three quarters of a century by iho aeg 
; ` Adjective madagascariensis. From Daubentonia — © 
i Megaladapis madagascariensis, a long processon of madagascarienses 
