PARK AND CEMETERY 
375 
that it were well should be emulated in this country. 
In an article on “How to Beautify the Waste 
Places,” written by Lord Gray in behalf of the work 
of the “Railway Banks’ Floral Association,” he said : 
“There is a possibility of covering with plants and 
shrubs the greater part of the 20,000 miles of barren 
and unattractive railway cuttings and embankments 
which disfigure the landscape of Great Britain 
throughout the whole of its length and breadth. It 
is true that a large proportion of this extensive mile- 
age does not afford opportunities for floral adornment, 
but it is equally true that stretches of railway banks, 
amounting in the aggregate to many thousands of 
miles, are well adapted to the effective display of 
hardy shrubs and flowers. To convert these huge 
blots on the landscape into patches of continuous in- 
terest and beauty is obviously a big undertaking, but 
not too big to be attempted with success, if the people 
who live in the neighborhood of railway embankments 
will undertake the adornment of their respective sec- 
tions. Form committees of resident ladies for every 
five or ten miles of railway, and the thing is done ! 
Once inspire the women of England with the wish to 
l^eautify the railway banks in their neighborhood, and 
each locality may safely be left to do its duty.’’ 
This should be suggestive to the improvement work- 
ers of the United States. 
^ ^ :|i 
A contributor to tbe American Agriculturist, New 
York, says that the first improvement society was or- 
ganized in Clinton, Conn., and the second in Clinton, 
X. Y. Will all those who have definite, reliable in- 
formation bearing on the date of organization of the 
earlier associations, please give this department the 
benefit of their knowledge? We should like to clear 
up this point definitely. Fr.\nce.s Copley Seavey. 
Garden Plants — Their Geography — EXXXI. 
CONIFERALES. the CYCAS, ABIES AND TAXUS ALLIANCE 
This is a most important group of large, medium 
or small trees or shrubs, and sometimes trailers and 
climbers in Gueteae. For garden purposes they may 
be considered to embrace five tribes, forty-eight gen- 
era and four hundred and twenty species. I have never 
known any two scientists to agree about them. For 
purposes of grouping, the arrangements of the older 
botanists are best, because in temperate regions their 
tribes give one or two deciduous genera each, and 
these may be made of great value in the pinetum as 
ornamental nurse plants. 
The generic affinities used are nearly a reversal of 
those in the Kew guides by Doctor Leasters, and ap- 
proximate those of the “Genera Plantorum,” but break- 
away from both at times, for, as I have said before, 
there is no agreement ; moreover in scientific gardens 
designed to be beautiful, ordinal or generic sequence 
has never been satisfactory. A wider choice is neces- 
sary for good grouping. 
The Cycadeae have been placed before Abieteae chieflv 
for convenient and geographical reasons. They and 
two or three genera on either side of them, with some 
of the Taxeae, will often be all the representation of the 
group possible in several parts of the tropics and re- 
gions bordering the tropics. Very likely, too, it will 
be sometimes agreed that the Araucarieae are as near to 
Cycads as anything now known, and who will say that 
better evidence may not be forthcoming either in liv- 
ing plants or in extinct “Cordaitales,” intermediate be- 
tween Cycas and other tribes. Gymnosporias are 
plants with naked ovules, often resinous, evergreen 
with a few exceptions, branchy, frequently pyramidal 
and elongating by their terminal buds as in Cycas and 
Araucaria. The cotyledones vary from two to several. 
The leaves are single or in bundles, bodkin or needle- 
like, scale-like or flat, parallel veined, veinless, fork- 
veined, or net-veined in Guetum, and often they vary 
greatly in form during the different stages of the 
plant’s growth. 
The male flowers are in aments, or terminal anthe- 
riferous cones, either on the same plants, as the fe- 
males, or on separate plants. They effect fertilization 
by throwing off pollen into the atmosphere in clouds, 
which often floats many miles, much as fern spores 
float. The female flowers are merely naked ovules or 
immature seeds which appear open at the apexes, and 
in the case of some, at least, exude a drop of viscid 
fluid at the appropriate time, which, perhaps, acts as 
a pollen catcher. 
The seeds are single, in pairs, or several together, 
within or upon more or less open, scaly, bractescent 
ovaries, or leafy envelopes gathered together in round- 
ish or elongated terminal or lateral erect or pendant 
cones of varied size. In the young state many of these 
cones seem fruity but become scaly when mature. In 
Junipers, Yews, Torreya, Ginkgo and others, the ripe 
seeds are enveloped by a hard skin or shell and sur- 
rounded by variously colored fruity pulp, which ob- 
scures or overgrows the supporting scales and bracts. 
These “berries” are a good obvious distinction. 
Coniferales are distributed over most parts of the 
world, in several cases very locally. There is generally 
a wide difference between those of the northern and 
southern hemispheres, and but a few genera are com- 
mon to both — Ephedra, Guetum, Cycas, Agathis pos- 
sibly, Libocedrus and Podocarpus being about all that 
cross the equator. Again while the contiguity of the 
