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THE AMERICAN MONTHLY REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



would be chosen to emphasize the importance 

 of the roadway. If it was desired that the 

 bridge emphasize the river, there would be 

 an elevation of grade and a conspicuous arch. 

 To avoid the stereotyped effect of the great 

 European forests, where the differences of 

 human control tend to average themselves in 

 an uninspiring sameness, the landscape archi- 



HEMLOCK GORGE RESERVATION". 



(Looking toward pond near Devil's Den.) 



tects have arranged these reservations in 

 three distinct forms of woodland. There are 

 the close woods, in which the leafy canopy is 

 unbroken ; the open woods, in which the trees 

 stand so far apart as to develop their lower 

 branches and leave sunny openings ; and open 

 ground, where the eye, though relieved by 

 occasional trees, wanders freely through pas- 

 ture and swamp. The city dweller not mere- 

 ly finds trees and blue sky, but can range 

 freely without fearing lest at any moment 

 he may emerge upon a crowded street. 



RURAL SCENIC RESERVATIONS. 



The outlying country always feels the 

 park impulses last. With no particular need 

 of " breathing spots," the cross-roads village 

 realizes with difficulty the wisdom of pre- 

 serving the finest scenery. But during the 

 past few years even rural Massachusetts has 

 caught the enthusiasm of what may be called 

 the country-park movement, and about all 

 the larger towns now have sizable parks. 

 About a dozen beauty spots in the real coun- 

 try have been given to the people of Massa- 

 chusetts as a result of the organization of 

 " trustees of public reservations." The crea- 



tion of this board, which became the model 

 for the National Trust for Places of His- 

 toric Interest and Natural Beauty in Eng- 

 land, encourages such benefactions by assur- 

 ing possible givers that lands they may offer 

 the public will be held and administered as 

 parks forever by a responsible authority. 

 Among the tracts secured in this way have 

 been Mount Anne Park, in Gloucester, a 

 rocky knob looking seaward to Maine; the 

 Rocky Narrows, a picturesque gorge on the 

 Charles River, and Monument Mountain, 

 whose 200 acres of picturesque tree growth 

 and jagged ledges constitute one of the finest 

 of the Berkshire hills. 



The Province Lands, 4000 acres upon the 

 tip of Cape Cod, held by the State since co- 

 lonial times, were until recently neglected. 

 With cool air, a wide view of shipping, with 

 memories of the toiling Puritans who here 

 dried and salted their fish, this tract deserved 

 a better fate. The State agent conscientious- 

 ly kept away, to avoid burdening the com- 

 monwealth with his fee of $3 per day. The 

 land was once heavily wooded, but the whole- 

 sale taking of sod and trees let loose a ruin- 

 ous and remorseless tide of the shifting cape 

 sands, strangling great tracts of pine and 

 maple, and choking many a lily pond and 

 salt creek. 



A systematic effort to reclaim this spot of 

 memories and possibilities has resulted, from 

 this country-park movement. Experiments 

 with willows, silver poplars, tamarix, horn- 

 beam, cockspur thorn, common privet, silver 

 maple, tree of paradise, white and seaside 

 pine, proved that these could not flourish 

 sufficiently to hold down the shifting sands. 

 But common alder, black locust, and bay 

 berry are found to thrive here, and native 

 pitch pine, which grows well either from 

 seed or transplanting, is most valuable in 

 binding the sand in place. 



The intense localism of the ordinary Amer- 

 ican community has been a most serious ob- 

 stacle in all this evolution. The ineffective- 

 ness of municipalities was suggested at the 

 time of the threat to remove Norton's Woods, 

 a lovely grove in the outskirts of Cambridge, 

 and the principal pleasure ground for a hum- 

 ble neighborhood in the adjoining city of 

 Somerville. Cambridge would not act be- 

 cause Somerville people would get the prin- 

 cipal benefit; Somerville could do nothing 

 because the land w r as in Cambridge. I was 

 expressing regret to a Winthrop real-estate 

 dealer that their Great Head had not been 

 taken twenty years before for $18,000, when 



