The article on Succession of Forest Growths is from an address delivered by Mr. Robert Douglas before the Association of American Nurserymen at Chicago, June, 1889, as printed in Garden and Forest, Vol. II, June 12, 1889.

The piers, for which specifications are given, are built upon the lake front of the estate of Mr. A. A. Sprague, 2nd, Lake Bluff, Ill.

Upon request of the Editor for material Mr. Egan sends in the article on Plant Sports. This is of such present interest to garden builders of the North

Shore that the discussion is continued in the editorial.

HORTICULTURAL SPORTS.

The bizarre garish unconventional individuals that are referred to among humans as "sports" have their counterparts in the plant world. One may be introduced to you by a friend, the other by a nursery catalogue. You will find that some have a thin veneer of color or an eccentricity of form or action that may be very amusing, but that have no real merit or permanent value; while on the other hand there are some sports that have such substantial and worthy qualities that they find a permanent place of honor among your friends, or in your gardens and landscapes.

It is to certain of these plant sports that we shall hereafter refer, such as the purple, golden, cut-leaved, pyramidal, table-form, table-topped, and weeping forms that have developed among species of Beech, Birch, Maple, Elm, Catalpa, Elder, Hazel, Dogwood, Pine, Hemlock, Spruce and other groups. These have become pretty well established in nurseries, gardens, and lawns, by reason of their vigor, health, distinctive foliage, or habit of growth.

They have been mostly used, however, as specimens, or to give brilliant spots of summer color in the conventional patchwork quilt shrub plantations, not as elements of broad landscapes.

Before considering their use in landscapes we should recognize that such sports are not always fugitive accidental freaks that can be reproduced only by It has been grafting or by cuttings. found, for example, that the seedlings of a conspicuous specimen plant of Wier's Cut-leaf Maple, Purple Beech, or Golden Spirea will produce so large a percentage of cut-leaved, and purple or golden offspring, that the progeny of an old seeding plant would be likely to establish in time a wide-spreading distinctive group, in which there will be much foliage like the parent, and color transitions due to variations in seedlings, and these would gradually merge the group into the surrounding trees. The Purple Barberry has already escaped from cultivation, and made these distinctive groups in open pastures.