22 FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM 
could, to advance its credit to the various municipalities for 
millions of dollars, as had been done in Massachusetts, 
relying, as there, upon a future apportionment or assess- 
ment upon the cities and towns within the district for final 
reimbursements. 
DIFFERENT PLANS IN MANY PLACES. 
It was, therefore, recognized at the outset of the discus- 
sion that only the general form of the preliminary legisla- 
tion in Massachusetts could be in any way advantageously 
used here. It had also been recognized that the movement 
for larger parks or park systems had taken different forms 
in nearly every city. New York had in 1888 expended mil- 
lions of dollars in adding nearly 4,000 acres of new park 
lands, extending, with the great connecting parkways, from 
Van Cortland Park on the Hudson, to the beautiful Pel- 
ham Bay Park on Long Island Sound—all embraced in 
what was soon afterwards known as the park system of the 
Bronx. 
In and about London the County Councils had at that 
time located and acquired, as had the authorities of Paris, 
vast tracts of lands for park uses, but each was then lack- 
ing, as in most other European and American urban com- 
munities, in any concerted action or comprehensive con- 
nective park system such as, I believe, was first adopted in 
this country in Detroit, and as was now deemed desirable 
for Essex County. 
It was accordingly understood that the favorable legis- 
lation that had just then been so promptly obtained in our 
own Legislature, would not only enable the work of acquir- 
ing and developing a park system here to go readily and 
rapidly forward, but, under the law, a commission, “gse- 
lected for fitness,’ would be enabled to adopt the best 
features of all the park systems, and by holding the enter- 
ae on the lines so conten approved by the Legislature, 
he preés atid the people, would rétain publie confidence and 
