bZ REPORT OF THE 



more complex the diversity. The power of this constructive 

 principle is no where better demonstrated than in that great 

 work of art, viz., the construction of a great city. 



But there is something far more serious than the lack of 

 architectural art or the failure of governing powers to reserve, 

 for public purposes, a sufficient number of suitable sites. It 

 is the embarrassing fact that the beautiful crests of the hills, 

 lying just beyond us in the very path of the fast growing city, 

 have been with infinite unwisdom converted into cemeteries, 

 Once more we. must beg to be distinctly understood. No spot 

 is too sacredly beautiful for the dead. No anxious guard too 

 eternal for the mortuary marble. But in reverencing the 

 dead we must not be recreant to the living. The health, the 

 life, the collective welfare of great multitudes of hunian beings, 

 are tilings far more important than the sepulture of those 

 to whom health and disease alike have long since ceased to be 

 either a blessing or a curse. Such an embarrassment is 

 exasperating by the monstrous fact that New York buries most 

 of its dead in these great necropolises of Brooklyn. Nearly 

 every ferry-boat at stated hours conveys a funeral. Thus the 

 city of the dead is fast becoming larger than the city of the 

 living. There should be a. law restricting the construction of 

 cemeteries in the proximity of great cities, in view of the 

 ghastly reflections with which old cities have found themselves 

 at last confronted. A more discerning provision should be 

 exercised for the future. Fortunately Greenwood, the beauti- 

 ful Pere la Chaise of America, is exempt from this harsh com- 

 ment by reason of its wise situation to the sideward of, the 

 city. The conclusion seems unavoidable, that the time will 

 come when the cemeteries, lying in the central rush of the 

 current of the city's growth, must be removed to some outlying- 

 locality, unless the ancient custom of cremation, already in 

 vogue at the Fresh Pond Furnace, shall be universally 

 adopted. 



In connection with the Department of Public Parks, the 

 Committee beg to recommend that a Topographical Com- 

 mission be appointed, by the Mayor, whose duty it shall be to 



