The principal and most important submarine cables traversing or connecting the great oceans are owned and operated by private corporations or companies. They are in number 310, and their length in nautical miles is 139,754. The length of cables owned or operated by state governments is, in nautical miles, 18,132.
The policies of states, the movements of fleets and armies, and the regulation of the markets of the commercial world, depend upon devices, communications and orders that are habitually transmitted through the agency of submarine cables. In this view, the first aim is to safeguard from wanton destruction the delicate and expensive mechanism of these cables; the second is to restrain within the narrowest limits practicable interruptions in the operation of cables, even in the midst of hostilities; and the third is to encourage the establishment and extension of submarine cables owned and operated by American capital. All these ends may be advanced by the agreement of the powers to neutralize absolutely the submarine cable systems of the world. To do this will be a step in the direction of extending international jurisdiction, which is to be a controlling feature of the new periodical about to be established at Berlin, and to be printed in German, French and English, under the name of "Kosmodike." —Alexander Porter Morse in The Albany Law Journal.
PARK MAKING.
Those who make public parks are apt to attempt too much and to injure not only the beauty, but the practical value of their creations by loading them with unnecessary and costly details. From the time when landscape gardening was first practiced as a fine art to the present day, park makers have been ambitious to change the face of nature—to dig lakes where lakes did not exist and to fill up lakes where they did exist, to cut down natural hills and to raise artificial ones, to plant in one place and to clear in another, and generally to spend money in construction entirely out of proportion to the value of the results obtained.
The best art is simple in its expression, and the highest form of art in gardening is perhaps that which, taking advantage of such natural conditions as it finds, makes the best of them with the smallest expenditure of labor and money. Simplicity of design means not only economy of construction, but, what is of even more importance, economy of maintenance. The importance of making it possible to keep a great park in good condition without excessive annual expenditures for maintenance is a simple business proposition which would not seem to require much demonstration. Yet park makers, with their unnecessary walks and drives; with their expensive buildings which are always getting out of repair; their ponds, in which there is rarely water enough to keep them fresh; their brooks, which are frequently dry; their elaborate planting schemes, often ill suited to the positions where they are wanted, make parks expensive to construct and impossible to maintain in good condition, especially in this country, where the cost of labor is heavy and there is difficulty in obtaining under existing municipal methods skilled and faithful gardeners to keep anything like an elaborate garden in good condition. The most superficial examination of any of our large urban parks will show that wherever elaborate construction and planting have been attempted they have failed from subsequent neglect to produce the effects expected from them, and that broad, quiet, pastoral and sylvan features are the only permanent and really valuable ones we can hope to attain in our great city parks.
It is needless, perhaps, to repeat what has been said so often in the columns of this journal, that in our judgment the greatest value and only justification of great urban parks exist in the fact that they can bring the country into the city and give to people who are obliged to pass their lives in cities the opportunity to enjoy the refreshment of mind and body which can only be found in communion with nature and the contemplation of beautiful natural objects harmoniously arranged. Parks have other and very important uses, but this is their highest claim to recognition. If it is the highest duty of the park maker to bring the country into the city, every road and every walk not absolutely needed to make the points of greatest interest and beauty easily accessible is an injury to his scheme, and every building and unnecessary construction of every kind reduces the value of his creation, as do trees and shrubs and other flowering plants which are out of harmony with their surroundings. Such things injure the artistic value of a park; they unnecessarily increase its cost and make the burden of annual maintenance more difficult to bear. Simplicity of design often means a saving of unnecessary expenditure, but it should not mean cheapness of construction. The most expensive parks to maintain are those which have been the most cheaply constructed, for cheap construction means expensive maintenance. Roads and walks should not be made where they are not needed, and they should not be made unnecessarily wide to accommodate possible crowds of another century, but those that are built should be constructed in the most thorough and durable manner possible, in order to reduce the cost of future care. When lawns are made, the work should be done thoroughly; and no tree or shrub should be planted in any manner but the best and in the most carefully prepared soil. Only as little work as possible should be done, but it should be done in the most permanent manner. The best investment a park maker can make is in good soil, for without an abundance of good soil it is impossible to produce large and permanent trees and good grass, and the chief value of any park is in its trees and grass; and if the money which has been spent in disfiguring American parks with unnecessary buildings and miscellaneous architectural terrors had been used in buying loam, they would not now present the dreary ranks of starved and stunted trees and the great patches of wornout turf which too often disfigure them. Only the hardiest trees and shrubs should be used in park planting; for there is no economy in planting trees or shrubs which are liable to be killed any year, partially, if not entirely, by frost or heat or drought, which annually ruin many exotic garden plants, nor is it wise to use in public parks plants which, unless carefully watched, are disfigured every year by insects. It costs a great deal of money to cut out dead and dying branches from trees and shrubs, to remove dead trees and fight insects, but work of this sort must be done, unless the selection of plants used to decorate our parks is made with the greatest care. Fortunately, the trees and shrubs which need the least attention, and are therefore the most economical ones to plant, are the best from an artistic point of view; and to produce large effects and such scenery as painters like to transfer to canvas, no great variety of material is needed. The most restful park scenery, and, therefore, the best, can be obtained by using judiciously a small number of varieties of the hardiest trees and shrubs, and the wise park maker will confine his choice to those species which Nature helps him to select, and which, therefore, stand the best chance of permanent success. No park can be beautiful unless the trees which adorn it are healthy, and no tree is healthy which suffers from uncongenial climatic conditions and insufficient nourishment. Even if they are not inharmonious in a natural combination, the trees and shrubs which need constant pruning to keep them from looking shabby are too expensive for park use and should, therefore, be rejected when broad, natural effects in construction and economy of maintenance are aimed for by the park maker.
The sum of the matter of park construction is to make rural city parks less pretentious and artificial in design and to so construct them that the cost of maintenance will be reduced to the minimum. This will save money and lessen the danger of exhibitions of bad taste and encourage that simplicity which should be the controlling motive of sincere art.—Garden and Forest.