PARK AND CEMETERY. 
47 
be forced into bloom and planted with 
the Rhododendron maximum for the 
opening days. 
There will be very little bedding of 
the ordinary kind and very little use of 
tender plants, excepting in protected in- 
terior courts. Hybrid tea roses will be 
used in large numbers for bedding. The 
little formal gardens that have been de-' 
signed and executed with edges of Cal- 
ifornia privet, kept low like the box, 
about the arts and crafts village, will 
be filled with flowers. 
In this group of buildings is a model 
school and a considerable area assigned 
to school gardens. Last spring these 
gardens were planted by eighty chil- 
dren representatives of all the schools 
of the region about Norfolk, and they 
will plant them again in the spring of 
1907. 
Of course, one of the most import- 
ant features of the grounds to which 
early attention was given is the street 
tree planting. This, too, was begun at 
an early period. Here again we were 
obliged to depend upon such trees as 
could be secured on the grounds and iri 
the region nearby. It was not thought 
advisable to move such trees as sweet 
gum, sour gum, and the tulip, so we 
have depended upon the pin oak, willow 
oak, water oak, red maple, flowering 
dogwood, cherries, locust, and apple 
trees about the parade ground with 
some paper mulberry. 
A year ago last winter fifteen hun- 
dred trees were moved, varying from 
four inches to twenty inches, a large 
number being from eight to twelve. A 
very small percentage of these have 
failed, and such are being replaced this 
winter. In the interior courts cedars 
are being used. 
The cost of this planting has been 
extremely low. We 'were able to col- 
lect at first Vinca major as low as thir- 
ty cents per thousand, mountain laurels 
from two to five feet high, $2.50 per 
hundred, and a large part of all our 
early shrub planting did not cost over 
two cents apiece in place, and this for 
shrubs averaging three to four feet in 
height. There were surprisingly few 
failures in this shrub planting. Many 
thousand herbs have been planted, but 
with a somewhat larger percentage of 
loss : among these were 80,000 Amaryl- 
lis atamasco, that were collected on the 
ground. 
In all the work on the grounds we 
have been fortunate in securing the 
hearty co-operation of the Board of 
Governors of the exposition company, 
who have never failed to recognize the 
necessity of securing the most attrac- 
tive conditions and who have carried 
out my recommendations in regard to 
this work almost without question. 
They will succeed in opening the e.x- 
position on time, and in having it as 
fully, if not more, completed than other 
expositions have been at the opening 
period. 
.So far as work on the grounds is 
concerned, the opportunity to establish 
nurseries and to begin our permanent 
nurseries two years before the e.xposi- 
tion, has made it possible to secure bet- 
ter results, especially so far as planting 
is concerned, than could possibly have 
been secured if the work had been post- 
poned, as so often occurs, until the last 
moment. Furthermore, these conditions, 
and the unusually favorable opportuni- 
ties for collecting have made it possible 
to secure better plantations at very 
much less cost than I believe has been 
possible at other expositions. 
ARBOR DAY EXERCISES AND TREE PLANTING 
The United States Department of 
Agriculture in Circular 96 of the For- 
est Service gives some valuable sug- 
gestions for the observance of Arbor 
Day, both in preparing appropriate pro- 
grams for exercises and in planting 
the trees. 
A muddy freshet so common in 
spring is taken as an illustration for a 
forest lesson to impress upon school 
children the value of forest preserva- 
tion. 
The stream is discolored by the 
earth which it has gathered from the 
soil. This carries us back to the 
stream’s source, in the forest springs. 
Again, it shows us with what force 
the water has rushed over the exposed 
ground where there was no forest to 
shield and bind it. In just this way 
the Mississippi tears down and flings 
into its bed, each summer, more soil 
than will be dredged with years of 
costly labor to make the Panama Ca- 
nal. An experiment with fine and 
coarse soils stirred quickly in a tum- 
bler of water and then allowed to set- 
tle explains how the stream continues 
muddy while it runs swiftly, and how 
it clears again as it slackens on more 
level stretches, dropping the soil to the 
bottom. On any steep, plowed hill- 
side. or on any railroad or trolley em- 
bankment, exposed soil may be seen 
washing with the rain. A forest on a 
mountain slope may be pictured by a 
cloth upon a tilted table ; then if water 
be poured on the higher edge it will 
creep downward through the cloth and 
drip slowly from the . lower edge, as 
would rain falling upon the forest. If 
now the cloth be plucked off, and the 
water still poured, we may observe at 
once what happens when such a forest 
is destroyed. 
Most articles in common use, cloth- 
ing excepted, are made of wood alone 
or in combination with metal. Here 
is an excellent subject for an Arbor 
Day composition. Let one but think 
of the poverty and backwardness of 
life without the material that is sup- 
plied only by the forest. No single 
one of nature’s gifts, after air and 
water, is more freely offered or readily 
enjoyed than wood. 
The flowers and seeds of trees are 
interesting subjects of investigation. 
The bursting of the blossoms on elm 
and red maple, the tassel-like catkins 
of cottonwood, willow and alder are 
among the earliest signs of spring. 
Some of the most fascinating facts of 
botany are easily studied in tree flow- 
ers. Black locust, basswoods, and yel- 
low poplar, for instance, carry perfect 
flowers that pollenize their own pistils ; 
chestnut, beech, pines, and spruces, on 
the other hand, have their staminate 
and pistillate flowers distinct, though 
on the same tree, while such species as 
the cottonwood, the willows, alders and 
ashes, the persimmon, and the box- 
elder, bear only the staminate or only 
the pistillate flowers on a single tree. 
The ingenious and often intricate de- 
vices of nature to secure cross-fertiliza- 
tion are well worth inquiring into. 
Many of die early flowering trees 
mature their seeds before the school 
year ends. The adaptations by which 
forest trees secure the distribution of 
their seeds are diverse. Some seeds, 
such as the nuts and hickories and 
chestnuts, are distributed by squirrels, 
foxes, bears, and coyotes, and by birds, 
others by the wind, and yet others by 
floods or running waters. Pledge-rows 
of locust trees commonly spring up 
where the seeds, after falling on the 
frozen snow, are driven by the winter 
gusts to lodge among the brush and 
roots along the fences. And the story 
of flower and seed conveys very vivid- 
ly the insistent purpose of nature to 
renew the forest and carry it, unde- 
pleted, from one generation to another. 
The seeds collected by the children, 
toward the close of the school year. 
