18 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
CASSIA CHAMAECHRISTA. 
England is as bare of leguminous trees as Britain, 
but certainly seeds reproduce trees in the middle 
Delaware Valley. 
Cassia is an extensive genus of nearly 4 °° spec- 
ies (or names?) Here we often have the rose shaped 
flower, and the 
leguminous fruit. 
They are found in 
all warm regions and 
are often handsome. 
C e r c i s , “red 
buds,” have 3 or 4 
species in Europe, 
Asia and America. 
C. siliquastrum i s 
the European “J udas 
tree” and is very 
common in the gard- 
ens of Eastern 
Europe. It has a 
white variety. It is tender in the states north of 
Virginia. C. Sinensis (known as japonica) is ten- 
der too if taken too far north. In New Jersey I 
have measured specimens of 21 feet spread, and 15 
feet high. The native C. Canadensis is a handsome 
hardy small tree. 
Acacia has 5 °^ species from the warm regions 
of all the continents but Europe. They are well 
known, handsome tender trees and shrubs, useful 
only in the southern and Pacific parts of the United 
States, and in greenhouses. 
Albizzia Julibrissin (called acacia) has often 
stood for several winters at Trenton, N. J., and is 
naturalized along the Mexican border. Several 
other species are grown at the south. 
The greatest difficulty in dealing with these 
plants is to confine a representative collection within 
reasonable limits. 
There are scores of genera with hundreds of 
species which are adapted to the warmer parts of 
this country, or to massing as groups in the “sub- 
tropical” gardens at the north, such as Clitorea, 
Hovea, Mucuna, and Inga. As a family the finer 
legumes have been neglected for purposes of orna- 
ment in American Gardens. 
Trenton, N. J. James MacPherson. 
Note: — In the last issue, the genus Amoapha was incorrectly 
attributed, by oversight in proof reading, to North Carolina in- 
stead of North America. 
LE NOTRE, THE GARDENER. 
A historical essay read before the Horticulturists’ Lazy Club of 
Cornell University, January n, 1897. 
The gardens of Louis XIV. of France were perhaps 
as brilliant as any creation or adaptation of that bril- 
liant king. Combined with the architecture of the time 
they were the setting of that magnificent court, whose 
fame shone and was reflected over all Europe. The 
wonder of their day, they are still admired as the highest 
creations of that former style of gardening which lasted 
from the earliest times until the last century. 
The ancient, formal or architectural style of garden- 
ing of which the gardens of Louis XIV. were a type dif- 
fers from the present in that it was purely architectural, 
and not based upon nature as the modern or natural 
style is. Art and nature are present in both, but in the 
former style art was the thing most thought of, while in 
the latter it was studiously concealed. The straight 
line, rectangular form and general symmetry were its 
prominent features. Everything was considered as a 
part of the building which it surrounded. Terraces, 
arcades, straight avenues of trees interspersed with 
statuary, parterres, canals and trees and shrubs clipped 
into fantastic shapes and geometrical figures are charac- 
teristic of this kind of gardening. Fountains and cas- 
cades, grottoes, colonnades, labyrinths and arbors are 
other features of it. Nature is nothing, and the feeling 
of nature is unknown. The same materials were used 
that the landscape gardener of to-day would employ, 
but with a different thought and purpose. 
The term garden as used until the eighteenth cen- 
tury was applied only to a yard or inclosed space sur- 
rounded by walls, as opposed to unenclosed fields and 
woods. Gardens on a large scale have existed from the 
establishment of the great regal powers. The monarchs 
of Nineveh, Babylon and all Asia each had their own. 
The formal garden of Western Europe, so far as is 
knowfi, began with Persia. The straight line and rectan- 
gular form were its principal elements. The prevailing 
plan was one of long parallel walks shaded by rows of 
trees, and of canals flowing down avenues in straight 
lines and terminating in square or octagonal marble ba- 
sins containing fountains. An interrelation existed be- 
tween house and garden, the latter being used to frame 
the architectural features. A balance was maintained, 
even the great palaces being juxta-placed. The Greeks 
copied the gardening of the Persians, like their man- 
ners and architecture, so far as the climate and state of 
society would allow, while the Romans in turn imitated 
that of the Greeks, but on a larger scale. Pliny the 
Younger has left us an exact description of gardens of 
his time. Avenues were adorned with statues, colon- 
nades, obelisks, triumphal arches, marble basins and 
precious vases. Between were lakes of living water, 
caverns and grottoes, streams and thick woods, all of 
them of beauty in detail, but without unity of composi- 
tion. Buildings became united with the gardens by 
stairs, terraces and balustrades. Verdure, near the 
buildings, was not natural, but in straight lines to blend 
with the architectural features. Trees and shrubs were 
trimmed into geometrical figures, cylinders, spheres and 
pyramids into silhouettes of animals and human figures, 
and even into orders of architecture. During the Mid- 
dle Ages and the Barbaric invasions gardening was 
barely kept alive within the protecting walls of the 
monasteries. But with the revival of the arts in Italy 
came the Renaissance of gardening, an almost exact 
reproduction of the old Roman style. The Italians were 
