THE ANNUAL MEETING. 143 



believe it would add much to the general welfare, happiness and prosperity of 

 the people. Tlie efforts of the society for the improvement and ornamenting 

 of school grounds is producing good results. 



Valuable papers have been contributed to the reports and excellent addresses 

 delivered at nearly every meeting for some 3'ears. At the first meeting of the 

 present year our honored president submitted a paper suggesting that the legis- 

 lature be requested to authorize townships to offer aid to the amount of fifty 

 dollars to each school district, expending a like amount in improving 

 and ornamenting its grounds, the same to be used in continuing the im- 

 provement. At the same meeting a report was made to the superintend- 

 ent of public instruction urging him to make the improvement of school 

 grounds a prominent feature of his State teachers' institutes, and to use his 

 influence towards having instruction in this branch given at the State normal 

 school, to the end that our teachers might be better qualified to give aid to the 

 improvement of the school grounds under their charge. 



I deem it no more than justice to extend our thanks to Messrs. D. M. Ferry 

 & Co., who through the efforts of Mr. W. W. Tracy have made under very 

 favorable conditions a generous gift of flower seeds to the schools of the State. 

 The value of all these efforts is beyond estimation, and if to them can be added 

 efforts in the direction I have named, the good influences will be extended, the 

 society will be strengthened, and the people will be benefited. 



Prof. Beal read some notes he had made on 



RURAL CEMETERIES. 



Mr. President: I am glad this subject is beginning to attract the atten- 

 tion of members of this society. It may seem to some that in considering the 

 subject of cemeteries the State Horticultural Society is going beyond its legit- 

 mate work. I think not, Mr. President. We have an illustrious example in 

 the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. That old society about 1835 — 55 

 years ago — was the means of establishing Mount Auburn cemetery, now the 

 chief burial place for the dead of Boston. On this topic I glean items from 

 the history of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, recently published : 



In 1825 '"'Dr. Jacob Bigelow, then a young physician of Boston, cherished 

 a love of the country by the character of his early botanical studies, and this 

 led him to desire the institution of a suburban cemetery in the neighbor- 

 hood of Boston, which might at once lead to a cessation of the burial of the 

 dead in the city, rob death of a portion of its terrors, and afford to afflicted 

 survivors some relief amid their bitterest sorrows." 



At this time nothing of the kind existed in the United States, nor even in 

 the world, on the scale of Mount Auburn as it now is. The gentleman who is 

 said to have originated the idea of neat rural cemeteries was the late J. Jay 

 Smith, of Germantown, Pennsylvania. He died the 22d of last September, 

 1881, at a good old age, and deserves the lasting remembrance of all lovers of 

 rural adornment. It is not many years ago that he accepted a request and 

 visited London, England, with the view of founding a similar kind of cemetery 

 with all recent improvements. 



Kobinson, editor of The Garden, in London, and author of the "Parks of 

 Paris," says "The Americans are the only people who bury their dead decently 

 and beautifully ; that is so far as the present mode of sepulture will allow 

 them. For beauty, extent, careful planting, picturesque views and keeping, the 

 garden cemeteries formed within the past generation or so, near all the princi- 



