494 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



ference and absence of ambition concerning the vital needs of a 

 city, which exists so commonly amongst our own people. 



In order to carry out the first of these essential measures for 

 the city's well-being, we would strongly urge the necessity for the 

 Municipality tO' compile an official and comprehensive building plan 

 for the extension of the cit}', as well as for the improving of exist- 

 ing thoroughfares, when opportunity offers. Where expropriation 

 becomes necessary, the ground required should be valued by a 

 Board of Arbitration appointed for the purpose, as in Paris, and 

 paid for and applied to the public benefit in the direction desired. 

 Hardly to be separated from this point is the equally vital one of 

 the necessity of scientific tree planting. 



(2) There are twO' kinds of public tree planting desirable, 

 namely, the provision for parks and the planting of trees and shrubs 

 in the open spaces and streets. The paramount claims of this sub- 

 ject tO' recognition is perhaps difficult to realise by those born in a 

 Northern clime, but needs noi demonstrating to those who^ have 

 lived in the South of Europe, in corresponding latitudes to our own. 

 Apart from the direct contribution tO' the health of the City by 

 growth of well-nourished trees of suitable kinds, there is another 

 practical reason for their presence — in order to give shelter to both 

 man and beast in the wide and more exposed streets and the open 

 spaces, permitting them to be traversed without the dangerous 

 plunge from shadow into sunlight, which all who live in a sunny 

 climate know the necessitv of avoiding. 



In a city of moderate size, with ready access to the environs, 

 parks are of less consequence than wide streets and spaces shaded 

 with trees. In many towns where private ground has been allowed 

 to swallow up open spaces which the Municipality has not suc- 

 ceeded in keeping open for the public benefit, a feeble concession is 

 sometimes made to the claims of the community by diverting some 

 waste and comparatively cheap land lying towards the edges of the 

 City into a public park, a concession which is often quite inadequate 

 from a hygienic standpoint, for the spaces to* be effectual must be 

 evenly distributed and near the heart of the city. We need only 

 take London as an example of this. In spite of the unsanitary con- 

 ditions ruling in immense unventilated tracts of houses in the poorer 

 districts, it stands high in the European scale for percentage of open 

 spaces, owing to the three or four huge parks grouped at the west 

 end of the Metropolis. Professor Stubben, of Berlin, an eminent 

 authority, calculates that a minimum of 5 per cent, of the city area 

 should be reserved to parks, and another 5 per cent, for planting 

 trees in streets and open spaces, the remaining 90 per cent, being 

 apportioned 60 per cent, to houses and 30 per cent, to streets. These 

 figures are not arrived at at random, but based on the plan of some 

 of the principal German cities. They have been acted upon in the 

 extension of Cologne, and may be interesting to those who have had 

 the privilege of travelling in Germany and seen the perfecrion of 

 comfort, health, and beauty achieved in this and other directions by 

 the application of a little practical science. 



