244 EDITORIAL KOTES. [Feb. 



Public Efxeeation-Geounds. — In the very centre of more and 

 more packed, populated, and extended London, the Metropolitan 

 Public Garden, Boulevard, and Playground Association have been 

 doing battle for open spaces. Their efforts in thirty cases have been 

 successful, and they give forty - eight items of unfinished work ; 

 while 210 closed burial-grounds and eight sites offered for building 

 might be turned into puljlic gardens and playgrounds. The table of 

 trees, shrubs, evergreens, and climbing plants suitable for London, 

 given in the second annual report is worthy of study by sylvi- 

 culturists. We shall return again to it. 



From the summary of an interview of the superintendent of Yellow- 

 stone National Park, given by our New York contemporary Forest 

 and Stream, it appears that there was a great concourse of visitors 

 during the past season, though not so many as had been anticipated. 

 The foreigners were mainly English and German. There had been 

 some little trouble with squatters and trespassers, but the game had 

 been pretty well preserved. Cinnamon and black bears, elk, deer, 

 and antelope, and Eocky Mountain sheep, and a small herd of 

 buffaloes, about a hundred in number, might be seen in the Park 

 last season, which closed about the loth of October. 



The Futuke Eents of Land. — The paper read by Mr. James 

 Howard to the Farmers' Club on the " past, present, and future of 

 farm rents," has drawn fresh notice to the main agricultural question 

 of the time. Arthur Young showed an average rent of 13s. 4d. 

 per acre for certain English counties in 1770 ; Sir James Caird 

 estimated the rental of the same land in 1850 at 26s. lOd. per 

 acre; and Mr. Howard gave an estimate of his own in 1878 of 32s. 

 6d., which, however, has been rather sharply criticised. From 200 

 private returns, Mr. Howard showed that there had been reductions 

 and abatements of rental averaging 22 per cent, in Northampton- 

 shire, 21 per cent, in Huntingdon, 14^ per cent, in Cambridge, 14 

 per cent, in Bedford, 13 per cent, in Essex, and 12 per cent, in 

 Lincolnshire. According to the Statist, rents must fall. Lands 

 which twenty and even ten years ago paid rent, can no longer yield 

 wages to the labourer, profits to the farmer, and rent to the land- 

 lord. It is probable that small farming on a large scale may post- 

 pone the reduction, or may mitigate it. But in the long run the 

 small farmers will insist on abatements, just as the large farmers 

 are doing. The recent sale of a residential estate in East Lothian 

 at nearly 20 per cent, reduction from its valued price of seven years 

 since, shows the trejid of the curient. 



