Central High School - EN EM Yearbook (North Manchester, IN)

Page 21 text:

MAPLE LEAVES. 15 buckwheat, rhubarb, dock, sorrel and various species of the smart weed group. None of these are unfamiliar to the inhabitants of Chester township. The Nettle family can claim four species of the elm, four of the nettle and one each of the mulberry and hop. The Jugland group can be identified with two species of the walnut and four of the hickory. To the Oak family belongs the birch, hazel nut, iron weed, oak, beech and chestnut. Of the Orchid family seventeen species have been identified by Jenkins in Chester township. This family consists mostly of terestrial plants. It is different from the rest of the families and deserves special notice. It is not capable of self-fertilization. Most species of this family are fertilized by insects. The flower is so constructed that the insect may reach the nectar and wax his wings well with the same and as he weaves about through the flower and leaves, he drags the waxy pollen from place to place and by so doing unconsciously fertilizes the plant. The different species are found in the swamps and marshes, especially huckleberry marshes in the sphagnum moss, which serves as a carpet for the marsh. The different species are herbs, clearly distinguished by their perfect irregular flowers, with six-merous perianth adnate to the one-celled ovary, with innumerable ovules on three parietal placentae, and with either one or two gynandrous stamens, the pollen cohering in masses. The fruit is a one-celled, three-valved capsule, with innumerable minute seeds, appearing like fine sawdust. The perianth is of six divisions and in two sets; the three outer sepals are mostly of the same petal-like texture and have the same appearance as the three inner petals. One of the inner set differs more or less in figure, and direction from the rest and is called the lip; only the other two taking the name of petals. The lip is really the upper petal, the one next to the axis, but by a twist of the ovary of half a turn it is more commonly directed forward and brought next the bract. Before the lip, in the axis of the flower, is the column, composed of a single stamen, or in Cypripedium of two stamens and a rudiment of a third, variously coherent with or borne on the style or thick, fleshy stigma; a two-celled anther; each cell contains one or more masses of pollen or the pollen granular. They have tube-shaped roots. The leaves are parallel, all alternate. The flowers are very showy. One of the most distinguished species of this family found here is the Cypripedium, or lady’s slipper. It has a root of many tufted fibres, has large, many-nerved and plaited leaves, sheathing at the base. Its flowers are solitary or few, but very large and showy. Besides the families above mentioned, two others are important and deserve notice here. To the Lily group belong the smilax, onion, hyacinth, asparagus and various lilies. The Sedge and Grass families are well represented with over one hundred species each. In conclusion there have been seven hundred and thirty species collected and classified from Chester township and its immediate environments. CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. KERNE E. FRAME. Perhaps in no other place in the world will we see such magnificent and far-famed buildings as those of the English cathedrals. Among these cathedrals, and one of the most famed, is the mother church of England. In the midst of the town of Canterbury, standing on a slight elevation and backed by higher hills, we see a great solitary church, which was first known as “Christ Church,” afterward called Canterbury Cathedral. The church was founded by Archbishop Laufranc, enlarged and completed by Anslem, and consecrated by Archbishop Corbel, in 1130, in the presence of Henry I of England, David, King of Scotland, and all the English bishops of the realm. “The ceremony was the most famous that had been heard of on earth since that of the temple of Solomon.” The metropolitan cathedral owes its enthralling interest to its vastness of scale, its wealth of monuments, its treasures of early glass, and the great historical scenes that have been enacted within its walls —above all, to that greatest of all historical tragedies, the murder of Thomas a’Becket. It does not owe its distinction to architecture. Whole building periods were unrepresented; for the century and a half when England’s design was at its best the Canterbury authorities slept. What we have is the result of two periods only, with some scraps incorporated from earlier Norman work. What is there is not of the best. Canterbury scornfully declines any attempt at composition. Transepts and turrets are plumped down anyhow and anywhere; to the east it finishes abruptly in the ruined crags of a vast round tower; to the west the towers of its facade were, till lately, as incongruous in character as in date. Externally it is an assemblage of distinct and discordant buildings. The entire length of the structure is five hundred seventy-six feet, and the extreme breadth one hundred fifty-nine feet. The main entrance is in a great porch projecting from the southern side of the southwestern tower. Passing through this entrance into the interior we first enter the great bare nave, as it stood when Chaucer’s Pilgrims saw it clothed. Here we have the perpendicular style. It had been changed in the fourteenth century from transitional

Page 20 text:

14 MAPLE LEAVES. of the pine woods, in exactly the same condition as it was fifty years ago. Why it is called the Margaret Fuller cottage is still something of a mystery, as Margaret Fuller was never a member of the community, and never lived in it. She was only a visitor. Then, to sum up, we find that comparatively few of the old buildings yet remain. Notwithstanding the fact that these people did all in their power to make the Brook Farm movement prosper, it lacked the real and true business principles and the vital elements of the simple and normal home life, which alone could have made Brook Farm a living reality today. THE FLORA OF CHESTER TOWNSHIP. BLANCHE G. IIINKLE. Numbering approximately nine hundred Phanerogams and six hundred Cryptogams, it has but little to distinguish it from the flora of other localities that do not possess limestone beds or extensive marsh land. Fifty years ago the forests of Chester township were thickly planted with specimens of those two great monarchs of the temperate zone, the white oak and the tulip or white poplar. The study of botany fifty years ago was surely a source of pleasure to such scientists as D. Condoll, Ehrhart, Hooker, Linnaens, Muhlenberg, Rafinesque and Torrey. When the ravages of civilization had not destroyed the sacred wilds of the floral world. How strange is the fact that all these great scientists visited this country in advance of that great destroyer of the natural, and the upbuilder of the artificial, civilized man. But with all the changes in the topographical appearances of Chester township, fully eighty of its plants found here then, can be found here now. In considering the subject matter of this paper, we deem it unnecessary to list this flora in detail, but to consider it in groups, and to form connection as far as possible with the plants under domestication. The first group of any importance in the Polypeta-lous Exogens is the Ranunculus or Crowfoot To it belong the larkspur, columbine, clematis, anemone and buttercup. The Crucifcra, or Mustard Family, can be identified with the cresses, mustard, turnip and the cabbage group, and several early spring flowers, as the tooth wart and cardamine. To the Geraniums belong the oxalis, which contains the common wood-sorrel, having petals white with reddish veins, often notched. The geraniums and touch-me-not, or balsam, are also species of this group that are found here. In the Rose family you will find our fruit-bearing trees, the apple, peach, pear, cherry and plum, the strawberry, blackberry and raspberry, which need no explanation to a “Hoosier.” The Onagra family contains the evening primrose, loosestrife and willow-herb. The Umbel group contains the parsley and parsnip of cultivation, and the poison hemlock of Demosthenes. About ten other indigenous plants can be found in Chester township. Of the Aralia family, ginseng, sarsaparilla and spikenard are found here. The Honeysuckle family, the first in the Gamopeta-lous Exogens, has for some of its members the common elder, the blackhaw and the woodbine or honeysuckle. The next large group is the Madder. Besides the use of some of its members in the coloring art, we derive from this family the coffee of commerce, Peruvian bark and quinine. Chester township is represented by the button bush of our swamps and about ten species of the galium or bed straw. The largest family division in botany is the Composite group, containing, as it does, a majority of our common weeds, such as the iron weed, golden rod, asters, dandelion, sunflower, daisy, ragweed and thistle There are about seventy distinct species in Chester township. Of the Lobelia we have five species. In this family most of the flowers are deep red and very large, growing on a single stem. The Heather family contains a great deal of our domestic shrubbery, for instance, the azalia, trailing arbutus and bay laurel, also the huckleberry, cranberry and wintergreen of the marshes. We find here five members of the Primrose family. Of the Olive family we have here only the ash in the wild form, with the fringe-tree, the lilac and the jessamine in cultivation. We have of the Gentian family six species, of the Phlox seven, and of the Waterleaf four. Boraginaceae, a large family of innocent plants contains the heliotrope, gomfrey, stickweed and the myosotis, or forget-me-not. Of the Convolvulus group we have the morning glory, the cypress vine and sweet potato of cultivation. The wild forms are the dodder and bind weed. The Nightshade family, although a large group in the tropics, has but few indigenous members in Ches ter township. To it belong the bitter sweet, Jamestown weed, tobacco, potato, egg plant and tomato. The Figwort family is represented by the fox glove, mullein and about twenty-four others. Some of them are very common and noxious weeds. Of the Mint family we have about twenty-two indigenous and eleven introduced species. The Buckwheat family is well represented in both the wild and cultivated forms. To it belong the

Page 22 text:

MAPLE LEAVES. if lt design to this. Here the pier arches are very lofty and the aisles beyond are very high. The pillars are almost like vast bundles of reeds, and pass almost insensibly into the. vaulting ribs above, their capitals being very insignificant. The triforium has lost its old height, its old character, almost its existence—is but the continuation over an unpierced wall of tracery of the great window which fills the whole width of the clerestory space above. On passing from the nave we come to the great choir. It is protected from the curiosity of everyone by screens. The central screen is raised on a high flight of steps which leads up from the nave and transepts. Nowhere else put in Westminster Abbey will your steps be so hampered as in Canterbury. A written permit from the Dean is quite essential for you to see Canterbury’s choir. The first thing that strikes even a slightly practiced eye is the unlikeness of the choir to the usual English type either of its own date or of any other. The second pair of transepts far to the eastward is paralleled in several churches elsewhere. But instead of a long level floor, broken only by a few steps before the altar here is a floor divided into different sections by broad, successive flights, giving an unwonted air of majesty and pomp. The line of great arcades and of the aisles-walls is not straight, but takes an inward trend eastward of the second transept. An almost straight-sided space again succeeds. The termination is neither the simple “semicircular Norman apse, nor the flat east end of late days. It sweeps upward as though to form the typical apse, but in the center of the curve opens out into a lofty chapel almost in a circular plan. All these peculiarities give an individual accent and a special beauty to the work; and all have a curious historic interest. The choir nearly perished in the great conflagration of 1174. But the lower portions of its outer walls survived, together with two chapels, finished as stunted towers, which had projected from the curvature of the apse, on either side. Then from the center of the old apse line had projected a square chapel, dedicated to Trinity and regarded as the church’s holy of holies. On the site of this and above his first tomb in the crypt, it was thought fitting that St. Thomas should be given sepulture. But a small isolated chapel would by no means serve his turn. A wide, dignified, open space was needed and circumambient aisles to receive a thousand feet at once. And so the church was again extended its full length. All along, in projections, on either side of the choir and Trinity chapel, wre may see the transept of martyrdom, Dean’s chapel, St. Anslem’s tower, and St. Andrew’s tower. There also we may see at different places the monuments of the Black Prince, Henry IV, Cardinal Pole, Archbishop Stephen Langton and also many others of interest. No crypt in the world is so stupendous as Canter-bury’s, or so interesting, either structurally or historically. It begins just eastward of the chapel, leaving the four great piers which support the tower to be assisted by the solid earth; and thence it extends to the east as far as the great choir reaches, following the same outlines with transepts and chapels of its owrn. There is doubt concerning the exact reason which dictated the final circular chapel. Its rightful name is “the Corona.” This name has been translated to mean “Becket’s crown,” in the belief that the chapel wras built as a separate shrine for the scalp which wras severed from his head by De Brut’s fierce, final blow. Were this corona omitted, the termination would show the common type of post-Norman times, but as France, not England, was developing it. Here, as everywhere else in the cathedral, we see the French design. The style of this part is neither Gothic nor Norman, but intermediate between the two—transitional. There are many points of unlikeness, but the most notable one is in the character of the capitals on the great piers and all of the lesser shafts that support the window's and the sides. The capitals show no mark of the English type. They are low and broad. The abacus is rectangular, and the rich, varied and delicate ornamentation show's that they are distinctly Corinthian. The effect, in general, is French, which prevails throughout the cathedral. In the old days the interior of a cathedral like this was covered in every niche of floor and wrall and ceiling with color and gold in tints that charmed the eye, and figures, and was lighted by windows like colossal gems and tapers like innumerable stars. It was furnished with altars and tombs, chanteries, trophies, statues and embroidered hangings, trodden by troops of gaudily clothed ecclesiastics, and filled with a never lessening crow'd of worshipers. Today it is cold and bare and glaring, scraped to the very bone, stripped of all save the architect’s first result, and empty even of facilities for occasional prayer. Now' wre pass to the west front, and commence a tour of the exterior. On the outside of the church, signs of foreign influence are traced far less conspicuously than within. A west front, was but rarely treated in England with the honor it received abroad. Here it shows little evidence of well thought out design. Its flanking towers have not been made to harmonize with the perpendicular window that fills the whole space between them. The east side speaks more decidedly of France, but gets a local accent through the very low’ pitch of the outer roof. Almost everything else is English. Yet it is only when we have gone along the w'hole south side, noting the rich Norman work of the eastward transept and of St. Anslem’s chapel, w'hen we