STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 93 



ways connected with our towns and cities? And are there not otlier and 

 higher ways in which it will pay, aside from the accumulation of wealth ? 



There is certainly no one, in our days of culture and taste, who does 

 not regard a beautiful home, embowered witii trees, with a smooth, well- 

 grown lawn between the house and the road, slightly shaded with ever- 

 greens and deciduous trees, with here and there a bed of choice flowers 

 cut in the green turf, with winding walks and road-ways sweeping to the 

 front, and thence to the different out-buildings, of much greater value 

 than if the same buildings stood in a simple lot or field. And the in- 

 creased value of such a beautiful home is more than a hundred per cent, 

 on the expenses incurred in its adornment. 



If, then, every foot of lawn, and every tree, shrub and flower, taste- 

 fully arranged around a home, renders it more valuable, a question of 

 profit should induce everybody to improve and beautify his home. What 

 is true to the individual, in a pecuniary sense, is true of a city or town. 

 The possession of fine gardens, large public parks and extensive park-ways, 

 is a source of wealth to a city. In 1858 I passed over the rocky, barren 

 district of Manhattan Island, where the great Central Park is now located. 

 I visited the same place this last summer. What a wonderful change in a 

 few years ! One hundred and forty-two acres occupied by the reservoir 

 of the city water works ; fifty-five acres in meadow ; fifty-four acres in 

 small glades of turf; four hundred acres of rocky and wooded surface; 

 forty-three acres in six pieces of water surface; fifteen acres in riding 

 ways ; fifty-two acres in carriage ways, and thirty-nine acres in walks, 

 besides eight expensive bridges and sub-way arches — altogether constitut- 

 ing one of the finest sylvan and pastoral landscapes in the country. Cap- 

 ital and labor were required to secure such results in so short a time. At 

 one time nearly four thousand men were employed on its works. Changes 

 were wrought so rapidly, and the enterprise received such early celebrity, 

 that the rise in the taxable value of the land near it more than met the 

 interest on its cost. 



It has attracted visitors from nearly every part of the world. The 

 number sometimes exceeds one hundred thousand in a day, or about ten 

 millions in a year. 



The great success and popularity of the enterprise to the city of New 

 York induced the cities of Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Albany, Providence, 

 Baltimore, Bufi'alo, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati and San Francisco, to 

 secure large tracts of land for public pleasure grounds, and the enter- 

 prises have generally added material wealth to these cities. The topog- 

 raphy of the ground at Chicago (and the same is true of our own city and 

 a large part of our great State) is not desirable to secure the most pleasing 

 efl"ect in landscape gardening, and yet, under the skillful management ot 

 a board of landscape architects, the 1,900 acres of Chicago's public 

 grounds are rapidly being converted into most attractive and beautifiil 

 resorts. Her fine chain of parks, with her twenty miles of park-ways, 

 provided with good macadamized or concrete roads, well planted with 

 trees, are already attracting the attention and admiration of Easterrj as 

 well as Western visitors. I am sorry to say that our own city is deficient 



