THE METROPOLITAN PARK SYSTEM. 157 



developed for the preservation of the most attractive passages of 

 natural scenery about the city. 



In 1882 the interest in the preservation of the Middlesex Fells 

 led to the enactment of the Public Forest law of that year. The 

 local difficulties were such, however, that no action appeared 

 practicable under its provisions. In the same year the General 

 Park law was enacted. Under this many cities and towns of the 

 Commonwealth have been enabled to establish parks and open 

 spaces to a very considerable extent. 



In the meantime Boston had developed its new park system to a 

 degree that enabled the community for the first time really to 

 appreciate by actual experience the true service and value of 

 public parks in a proper sense of the term. In this way the more 

 immediate wants of the urban community to the southward of the 

 Charles River were met. To the northward, however, next to 

 nothing had been accomplished until the city of Lynn gave a 

 very great impetus towards definite and comprehensive metropolitan 

 action by its important step in establishing, at the "Lynn Woods," 

 a great public forest reservation of more than two thousand acres, 

 within its own limits. Exceptional circumstances enabled Lynn 

 to do this by itself. Among these circumstances may be 

 mentioned the possession of an unusual number of public-spirited 

 men who, when the city was made alive to the necessity of 

 protecting its water supply from pollution by preserving neighbor- 

 ing lands from the encroachments of the rapidly growing population, 

 had the energy to raise by subscription an amount sufficient, in 

 addition to the sum appropriated by the city, to secure the 

 ■conversion of the entire great wilderness into a public recreation 

 ground. 



The example thus set by Lynn was a great one, and it had a 

 powerful effect in stimulating interest, not only throughout 

 metropolitan Boston but in many other parts of the United 

 States. It became evident, however, that with the metropolitan 

 region divided as it was into many separate cities and towns, 

 nothing further could be done to meet these needs in a comprehen- 

 sive way through the instrumentality of purely local initiative. 

 This being the case, the demand for some form of united and 

 comprehensive action naturally arose. It was in the course of a 

 study of the conditions of the "Greater Bostou" suggested by 

 the facts of the census of 1890, made for the Boston Herald, that 



