The Garden Magazine, February, 1924 
359 
lives to enrich our hothouses with the jewels of the New World tropics. 
The name of Messrs. Veitch is inseparably connected with this explora¬ 
tion work, and this article may fittingly end with a few words about 
their collector, Pearce, one of the greatest of all plant introducers. 
Richard Pearce was born at Stoke Devonport, England, and in Feb¬ 
ruary 1859 entered into engagement with Messrs. Veitch to visit South 
America and collect plant material. The first expedition lasted three 
years and was renewed in 1863 for a similar period. His first expedition 
was mainly to Chile and the temperate regions to the south and does 
not directly concern this article, though in 1862 he traveled in Peru and 
sent home a number of good things including the handsome Calathea 
Veitchii. His second trip was confined to the tropics and the results 
were more than satisfactory. Among the many fine plants he intro¬ 
duced mention may be made of Sanche^ia nobilis, Aphelandra nitens, 
Mutisia decurrens, Hippeastrum pardinum , H. Leopoldii, Begonia 
Neitchii, B. boliviensis, B. Pearcei and B. rosaeflora. In 1867 he agreed 
to travel and collect in South America for Mr. William Bull, but 
arriving in Panama he was taken ill on July 13th and died on the 17th of 
that month, of a bilious remittent fever. His name is indissolubly 
connected with the history of the Tuberous Begonia and with the 
present day Hippeastrums, and his untimely death was a great loss to 
the world of horticulture. 
This is the concluding article of the present series begun in January of last year. 
THE GARDENER’S BOOKSHELF FOR 1924 
Taming the Wildings (G. P. Putnam’s Sons) by 
Herbert Durand. 
It would really be difficult to over-praise so timely 
and constructive a presentation of vanishing wild plant life, its relation¬ 
ship to gardening, and its great possibilities of development under 
sheltering surveillance. Very practical and readily followed are Mr. 
Durand’s comprehensive lists of flowers, shrubs, and trees, grouped 
according to their varying soil requirements and their suitability for 
different uses. 
With “more than seventy-five per cent, of the planting material used 
to-day in American landscape work of foreign origin” and Quarantine 
37 clamping the lid ever tighter, this “book of cultural information 
for lovers of our wild flowers, wild bushes, and Ferns who desire to 
grow them for landscape and garden effects” comes as a godsend. 
We like, too, the emphasis on protection running all through, the 
spirit of care for our fields and our forests, as in Chapter VII—an 
especially interesting chapter, by the way, with its descriptive lists of 
some hundred and eighty-four perennials. 
By a happy combination of imagination, feeling, and knowledge has 
Mr. Durand lifted his undertaking out of the mere manual class into 
the realm of definitely constructive writing. It seems rather in the 
nature of an anticlimax to add that 24 color plates and more than 150 
cuts from photographs, showing plants in their natural haunts, con¬ 
tribute toward an attractive and serviceable whole. 
The Cultivated Evergreens —A Handbook of the Coniferous and 
most Important Broad-leaved Evergreens Planted for Ornament in the 
United States and Canada (Macmillan Co.)—Edited by L. H. Bailey. 
At last, we have a hand-book on a group of essential garden plants 
that have been hitherto treated only in magazine articles. This 
volume greatly simplifies the identification of these valuable planting 
materials—coniferous and broad-leaved. 
It is significant that in two such wholly dissimilar books as this and 
Durand’s “Taming the Wildings” similar strong warning should be 
struck. On the very opening pages, Prof. Bailey says: “the forest has a 
place in the association of the human race that must not be overlooked, 
and in these later times, when the great forests are constantly receding, 
we should make a special effort to keep green the memory of the woods.” 
Well, fortunately for us all and for the nation at large, Prof. Bailey 
has brought together in this comprehensive handbook the findings of a 
group of men whose scientific training has been supplemented by the 
knowledge born of practice, such men as John Dunbar, the able Assis¬ 
tant Superintendent of Parks at Rochester (N. Y.), W. T. Macoun, 
Dominion Horticulturist, Ottawa (Canada), Alfred Rehder of the 
Arnold Arboretum, and a dozen others highly qualified to speak. 
Evergreens for the little garden, evergreens for park plantings and 
reservations—giant Pines and the diminutive Daphne—all come in 
for their share of discussion. Identification, cultivation, propagation, 
and a most interesting chapter on the “Adaption of Conifers,”—solid 
nutriment well worth digesting, an indispensable addition to the refer¬ 
ence shelf of garden clubs and of individual gardeners who appreciate 
the poetic quality of this great race of plants, their stability, their 
patience, and their promise—“trees that will give a man joy as long 
as he lives and carry his memory to his children’s children.” 
Botany, the Science of Plant Life (Harper 
& Bros.) by Norman Taylor, Curator, Brooklyn Sv 
Botanic Garden. 
This title (selected to conform with the other volumes in The 
Modern Popular Science Series to which it belongs) with its dry-as-dust 
implication unfortunately gives no inkling of the dramatic story un¬ 
folded under its egis—the long romance of plant life lifting itself slowly 
skyward eon by eon out of the slime, the plant life upon which we 
humans—all unconsciously in our arrogance—depend for our very exis¬ 
tence. “Certain plants like wheat, corn, cotton, jute, rubber producers, 
and tobacco have so shaped the life of the people, so absolutely dic¬ 
tated the development of whole regions of the earth’s surface that their 
stories are part of the history of mankind.” 
Fascinating to let the imagination play over the vast linking of all 
forms of life and their interdependence, and Mr. Taylor has managed 
to convey this fascination in a fashion sufficiently simple and direct to 
reach even a child or the man who reads as he runs—and this without 
any slurring of the scientific verities though with considerable welcome 
modification of the ordinary scientific diction—an achievement for 
congratulation, opening, as it does, the door to many who would never 
otherwise find this kingdom at all but, having once discovered it, 
may be tempted to stroll further. 
The Spirit of the Garden (Atlantic Monthly Press) by Martha 
Brooks Hutcheson. 
“Every example of good planning and true beauty which exists 
to-day will go far toward establishinga greater knowledge in the achieve¬ 
ments of to-morrow. All the planting material in the world is of 
little value if a sense of basic principles be lacking.” 
Sententious phrases which strike the keynote of Mrs. Hutcheson’s 
teaching—sound teaching backed by many years’ practical accomplish¬ 
ment in her chosen field of art, landscape gardening, and here portrayed 
by pleasurable picture and word—words so pleasurable that it is hard 
not to indulge in liberal quotation. When good gardening unites with 
good writing as in “The Spirit of the Garden, ” few of us care to miss il 
—an altogether delightful book delightfully illustrated with gardens 
of Granada, Italy, and India, as well as a dozen or more of the author’s 
making on this side of the sea. 
The Melody of Earth —An Anthology of Garden and Nature 
Poems From Present-day Poets (Houghton Mifflin Co.)—Selected and 
arranged by Mrs. Waldo Richards. 
All the colorful and miraculous pageantry of gardens, their serenity 
and stir are mirrored here for the permanent pleasure of gardeners; 
and what strikes us most in going through this book (now in its fifth 
edition) is how deeply and how intimately a part of the poet’s con¬ 
sciousness the garden has become. Not superficial sentiment or the 
desire for pretty symbols of comparison characterize the verses of these 
moderns, but a keen and sympathetic understanding of the ways and 
moods of nature rings through the work of the hundred and eighty- 
five authors represented in this anthology. And the heartening sig¬ 
nificance of this is, of course, that gardens have woven themselves into 
the vital life of people at large, for poets are, after all, the spirit of a 
nation made articulate in song. 
