PARK AND CEMETERY. 
57 
5,300 plants, all flourishing, and which will pro- 
vide liberally for the improvements to be inaugu- 
rated. Many have already been distributed. 
Audubon Park, formerly known as Upper City 
Park, w IS purchased in 1871, and the tract cost 
$800,000. It contains 247 acres, which is not yet 
alt properly developed, but under the stimulus of 
INTERIOR VIEW HORTICULTURAL HALL, AUDUIION PARK, 
NEW ORLEANS. 
present sentiment in park matters, and the active 
sympathy of the commissioners, a scheme of 
improvement has been decided upon, designed by 
Mr. Olmsted, which will be gradually carried out as 
funds and opportunities are favorable. 
PROVINCIALISM IN PARKS. 
Every little while the world breaks out in fads. 
There is no exception in parks. First, they were 
hemmed in by high walls, then came the idea of 
shearing trees into all kinds of grotesque shapes. 
In 1720 Pope and Addison took the matter up, 
censuring the custom severely. Later on William 
Kent came to the front. He did away with the 
artificial and followed nature, and even planted old 
dead trees, so as to be a faithful copyist. A present 
fad in the East is copying nature in the surrounding 
country. Take Massachusetts, the Savin, white 
spruce, white pine and hemlock are good trees, but 
why should others be excluded because they are not 
natives. Eggleston, in one of his books, makes a 
drunken young rowdy say to his fellows: “Now, let 
us do something ludicrous.” So they started out 
and mobbed an old man and ran him over the river 
because he was a Dutchman. The old man was 
worth the whole crowd, but he had to go. I 
thought of that when they were running some 
beautiful trees out of one of the Boston parks, be- 
cause they were not natives. 
It strikes us that a public park should be a col- 
lection of beautiful flower.^, shrubs and trees which 
the vvmld afford-, and these should have the most 
tasteful arrangement and careful cultivation that art 
and skill can giv 
I have asked prominent landscape gardeners 
why this exclusiveness? and the reply was: “You 
would not have every park copy the Arnold Arbor- 
etum.” As well copy that as the 10,000 tame and 
monotonous native landscapes you see all over the 
E ist. Years hence people are going to feel a sense 
of wrong. They will say, “Money was furnished 
and great expense was laid out for a first-class park, 
instead of this monotonous affair.’’ For 25 cents 
we can take the cars and go out almost anywhere 
and find native parks on a far larger scale. 
Then the education of the people is something 
of an item. 
How would it do to try this narrow process for 
food? A man goes into a Boston restaurant and 
says: “I want a meal of things which are indigenous 
to Middlesex county.” The waiter shakes his head 
and says: “No beef, mutton or pork ; no rye or 
wheat bread; ducks and geese all gone, and venison 
missing for 200 years. There is a potato, about as 
big as a pea, growing in the woods ; can’t stop to 
get itnow; can’t give you anythingbut cornbread and 
fish. Hold ! Corn is not indigenous, and you can 
have nothing but fish and salt, with no butter and 
pepper on it.” 
Suppose you are a florist and refuse to touch 
anything but native flowers, what would your trade 
amount to ? This exclusive system would not work 
in your garden. Why insist on it for the park ? 
Now, the Yankee is a fine fellow. I like him; but 
it would not hurt him or his park to broaden them. 
A Scotch elm, a European linden, or a beautiful 
Russian olive, with its thrift, marvelous fragrance, 
and glauca type, would not hurt anything. While 
the Norway spruce, the Orientalis, the Nordman, 
and the treasures of the Rockies and Sierras would 
certainly enrich the conifers. 
C. H. Harrison. 
It is interesting to know that 4,200 species of 
plants are gathered and used for commercial pur- 
po.=es in Europe. Of these 420 have a perfume 
that is pleasing, and enter largely into the manu- 
facture of scents and soaps. There are more 
species of white flowers gathered that of any other 
color — 1 ,124 in all. 
In every city or town in the Netherlands you 
will find a Rosemary street. In olden days, only 
undertakers lived in them — the rosemary being, in 
the language of flowers, specially dedicated to the 
dead. 
