NURSERY GARDEN IN JAPAN.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 27, 2 April 1907, Page 6

NURSERY GARDEN IN JAPAN.

| P^ l 4ous Uovektlon oi #liGt Cao Be faa the Way <# frMft , isv Jferari Tr fi% ' jSjfepatuwie nursery garden Is a Elation, says Maomillan's There, on benches, in rows, sit tortured trees in their bowls or pans of faience. Their perfection is a marvel of patience, requiring years for its accomplishment; sometimes one man will give as much as 30 years' attention to a single little cherry tree. Each curve, each leaf, each twig has its direction and proportion regulated by the most rigid and immemorial" principles; and to have any value in Japanese eyes a dwarf must conform absolutely to the iron rules laid down by the canons of taste in the days when Iyeyasu Tokugawa paralyzed into an adamantine immobility the whole artistic and intellectual life of the country. The effect is, of course, exquisite in its eleborate and rather morbid beauty. But it must be said that there are many dwarfs, very many, which go for low prices, owing to the imperfections of their development; they have a bough, or a bend, that is not prescribed. Consequently the Japanese buy them—indeed, with pleas ure—but will not admit their 3laims to be works of art. Naturally he will buy them, as even so they are beautiful, and their price brings them within the range of everyone's ambition. So, at home, one might' buy a Severn instead of a Turner, recognizing the differences clearly, but valuing the cheaper picture as highly as it deserves, and buying it the more readily for its cheapness. However, these Japanese trees that fill the gardens are wonderful, with all their imperfections, and the untutored savage eye of the west entirely fails to see any difference between a perfect specimen ten inches high, three centuries in age, and £3O in price, and its neighbor of equal height, of five years' growth and five shillings value. They are all dainty, and of every kind.

THE NEW ENGLAND STATES

Boston Pußfcation Finds Ividence of Decadence—Can't Keep Up with Maroh of Progress,

New England is stale, declares the Buffalo Times. Too far gone to keep up with the rapid march of progress, it has dropped out of the procession. The Boston Herald finds evidence in recent statistics of the decadence of the group of states not only in political influence and literary eminence, but also in manufacturing and commerce. During the past year national banks increased in number, capital, deposits and aggregate resources in other parts of the union, but in New England there was a smaller number of banks, less deposits and less aggregate resources than at the beginning of 1903. In manufacturing New England has not kept abreast with other sections of the country. The textile industry is in part absorbed by the south and other lines of productive industry are appropriated by the middle and western states.

The Herald believes that special legislation would restore to New England its old-time prosperity, but there is grave doubt as to the advisability of providing it. The Baltimore Sun, discussing this proposition, ably says that New England is a corner of the country, and a national policy that suits the rest of the union does not necessarily favor a remote corner. Cliff of Natural Glass. A cliff of natural glass can be jeen in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming. It is half a mile long and from. 150 feet to 290 feet high, the material of which it consists being as good glass as that artificially manufactured. The dense glass which forms the base is from 75 feet to 100 feet thick, while the upper portion, having suffered and survived many ages of wind and rain, has naturally worn much thinner. Of course, the color of the cliff is not that of natural glass—transparent and white—but it is mostly black, and some places mottled and streaked with brownish red and shades of olive green and brown.