72 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



enlargement of the common limits, but admonishes us 

 of the increasing dangers to the ashes of the dead from 

 its disturbing movements." 



Although the enterprise was delayed by the difficulty 

 of securing a suitable tract of land, it was not aban- 

 doned; but inquiries continued to be made, and negotia- 

 tions attempted, for various grounds advantageously 

 situated in the vicinity of Boston. Overtures were 

 twice made by Dr. Bigelow to Augustus Aspinwall for 

 the beautiful estate -held by his family in Brookline. 

 Negotiations were also attempted for land on either side 

 of the Western Avenue, on the branch leading to the 

 Punch Bowl. These and other attempts failed, either 

 from the high price at which the land was held, or from 

 the reluctance of the owners to acquiesce in the use 

 proposed to be made of the premises. 



A tract of land situated in Cambridge and Water- 

 town, and known as " Stone's Woods " (the title to the 

 land having remained in the Stone family from an early 

 period after the settlement of the country), but more 

 familiarly to the students of Harvard College, by whom, 

 in common with other admirers of rural scenery, it was 

 much frequented, as " Sweet Auburn," a name be- 

 stowed upon it by Col. George Sullivan and Charles 

 W. Greene, 1 when college students, had been pur- 

 chased in 1825 by George W. Brimmer, who after- 

 wards enlarged the original purchase by adding to it 

 several pieces of front land intervening between the 

 wood and the public road on which the gate now 

 stands, so that the whole estate included about seventy- 

 two acres. Dr. Bigelow, who had often visited the 



1 Col. Sullivan belonged to the class of 1801, and Mr. Greene to that of 

 1802. 



