282 Domestic Notices : — England. 



a year it was still adhering to the surface of the gravel, black instead of green. 

 But the effect produced by the sulphate of copper was remarkable. The 

 moss entirely disappeared ; and at the end of the year, when the rest of the 

 walk was again completely carpeted, the strip which had been watered with 

 this solution was perfectly bare." {Gard. Chron., Jan. 16. p. 36.) 



Road-making. — In some towns of Belgium, Campeachy and Pernambuco 

 woods are used for roads after the dye is extracted, and they are reduced to 

 small pieces. They are admirably adapted to garden-walks, giving them the 

 softness, elasticity, and warmth of a carpet. (Gai-d. Chron., Jan. 30. p. 71.) 

 Spent tan is frequently used for the same purpose in Belgium. 



Art. II. Domestic Notices. 

 ENGLAND. 



Parks and Pleasure-Grounds. — In the Westminster Review for April, there 

 is a very interesting article with the above title, to which we wish to direct 

 the attention, not only of gardeners, but of the inhabitants of towns and cities. 

 The object of the article is to procure parks and pleasure-grounds for the 

 working classes, and to show the progress that has been made in attaining this 

 object during the last five years. 



" Public opinion is gradually awakening to a sense of the importance of 

 open spaces for air and exercise, as a necessary sanatory provision, for the in- 

 habitants of all large towns. Some little sympathy, too, is beginning to be felt 

 for those who have hitherto suffered almost a total privation of every innocent 

 pleasurable excitement, and a desire exists, or is at least professed, in in- 

 fluential quarters, to extend the rational enjoyments of the working classes. 

 It is five years since Mr. Buckingham, member for Sheffield, moved in the 

 House of Commons that the inhabitants of large towns should be empowered 

 to rate themselves for the purpose of providing public gardens, or open spaces, 

 for the healthful recreation of the class now pent up in courts and alleys, or 

 confined to crowded streets. It is well known that on the Continent similar 

 powers have been long intrusted to the municipalities of towns. In the 

 suburbs of many of the cities of Germany and Holland where fortifications 

 once existed, the walls have been demolished, the ditches filled up, and beds 

 of flowers, shrubberies, and broad gravel walks formed instead ; where, in 

 summer time, the whole population may often be seen enjoying the pleasure 

 of an evening promenade. In free England, it was proposed that the inhabi- 

 tants of our towns should be permitted to tax themselves, if they thought 

 proper, to the extent of the funds necessary for a similar object ; and a 

 ministry, and a majority in parliament, resisted the proposition ; and to this 

 day powers which might have been claimed as rights have been withheld from 

 all the municipal councils of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1837, Mr. Hume 

 succeeded in carrying a resolution, as one of the standing orders of the House, 

 that in all new enclosure bills some portion of the waste lands about to be 

 appropriated should be set apart for the healthful recreation of the inhabitants 

 of the neighbouring towns or villages. Since the resolution was adopted by 

 the House, sixty-three enclosure bills have passed into law, and several hundred 

 acres of land, which would otherwise have become private property, have been 

 secured to the public. This is an admirable beginning, but one which may be 

 regarded rather as a preventive of future evils (arising from an increasing 

 and too crowded population) than a cure for those which have long existed. 

 The pale and sickly inhabitants of towns see nothing but brick walls stretching 

 farther and farther in every direction around them, green fields becoming 

 brick-fields, pleasant hedge-paths converted into long lines of streets, and 

 every opening closed, or closing, from which a glimpse of nature could once 

 be obtained. How many thousands of those who, once or twice in the year, 

 visit St. James's and Hyde Park on Sundays are deterred, by a weary walk of 

 three or five miles, from habitually enjoying a privilege designed chiefly for the 



