THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE OF AMERICA 
517 
Finally, it lessens the possible number of friction 
points. Whenever we bring into any American munici- 
pality a new commission of any sort that has to work 
in co-operation with other agencies in the community, it 
takes a long time, generally, to establish those points of 
contact that make for harmony in the working out of the 
machine. Most part departments in this country have 
been co-operating to a greater or less degree, with those 
other agencies, like the library or school board, so that 
it is not necessary to build up a new standard of relation- 
ship that is usually necessary when you bring in a new 
commission into this field. 
I believe also that the park department should func- 
tion in this field as a special agent because, through these 
commissions the people are given a greater return for the 
money invested in the properties which the park depart- 
ments possess. 
It also enables the park departments sometimes to 
secure, from the use of other public properties, service 
that represents a larger return for the money invested in 
those properties. So that it is an economical proposition 
from that standpoint. I believe that that has been the 
history of park departments, in recent years, particularly. 
In one little Southern city last year, I went and took 
up the problem of the development of some spot for all 
the year round recreation. They said a park department 
was an impossible institution. I went over and saw this 
gentleman and had a little talk with him and called upon 
the members of the park board and talked about this 
commission to them, and in just one week from that day 
that park board took action on that matter, and made 
provision for the employment of a supervisor of recrea- 
tion the year round, and decided that the providing of 
recreational facilities for the children of that city would 
be the permanent policy of that park board. This year 
that park department has a number of playgrounds, 
with a special playground for colored children, and one 
day I was there recently, and they voted to establish a 
park for colored people elsewhere in the city. They have 
put workers in there so that they would have a properly 
equipped playground, and all sorts of things. 
This shows the possibilities of a park department when 
it rises to its opportunities and to its responsibilities. 
Now, how is this affecting the modern park depart- 
ment? It is very easy to see that. It is affecting modern 
park departments from the standpoint of fruther develop- 
ment. It is affecting modern park departments from 
the standpoint of administrative machinery. It means the 
introduction into that machinery of a new type of worker 
— the playground and recreation leader. Tt means that 
we are going to have more money and that is one thing 
that the American Playgrounds and Recreation Associa- 
tion is willing to get behind you in, to try to educate the 
people of America to the necessity of providing better 
and more adequate appropriations for the carrying on of 
modern park departments, from this standpoint. It 
means, finally, that the viewpoint of modern park depart- 
ments is changed. Instead of being merely landscape 
art and construction engineering, the modern park de- 
partments become social organizing and directing insti- 
tutions, and take rank along with the public schools in 
ministering to the higher and finer development of the 
life of the people of the communities in which thev work. 
It means that park executives are going to become more 
and more students of social problems. 
I was very much interested when I stepped into the 
office of the St. Louis Park Department the other dav to 
find there one of the officials bending over a map, which 
was a very detailed analysis of the distribution of the 
population in that city. He was working that out by 
hlocks, knowing the number of children in everv block. 
the number of young people, and the number of adults 
in every black. That represents one of the new phases 
of modern park development from that standpoint. 
I would like to say, also, that the St. Louis Park De- 
partment, through the union of the old recreation com- 
mission, or park department, and through the building 
up of that splendidly organized administration, surely 
represents to my mind one of the finest developments by 
modern park departments along the lines not only of the 
old ideals of the park departments, but also of the new 
modern ideals represented in the Playgrounds and Re- 
creation Association of America. 
THE GOOSE FLOWER. 
(Continued from page 504.) 
easy, but dangerous, to cite a few well-known examples 
of these spectacular self-boomers. And this weary old 
world, satiated with the commonplace, welcomes or at 
least tolerates most of these queer specimens of humanity. 
Among plants there are few that are more consistently 
freakish in their behavior than the aristolochias. Conse- 
quently many of them are cultivated chiefly on account 
of the extraordinary forms of their flowers and in spite 
of their defects, such as the disagreeable odor of some 
of them — an odor which would not be called fragrance 
even by the flowers' stanchest friends. 
As is well known, several species of aristolochia are 
named after oddly shaped objects, animate or inanimate, 
which they resemble. Probably the most familiar in- 
stance of this is Aristolochia macrophylla or A. Sipho, 
the Dutchman's pipe. This plant, however, really owes 
its popularity to its genuine, unquestioned merits as a 
vine, rather than to its flowers, which, though curiously 
formed, are not especially conspicuous. Other examples 
of the fantastic among these plants are : Aristolochia 
cymbifera, boat-shaped ; A. ornithocephala, bird's head, 
and A. tricaudata, three-tailed. One variety has even 
been named A. ridicula ; among its appendages are two 
long lobes which are said to "remind one of a donkev's 
ears." 
Aristolochias Grandiflora Sturtevanti — The Goose Flower. 
Perhaps the most striking of all the aristolochias, how- 
ever, is A. grandiflora Sturtevanti, the goose flower, and 
looking, indeed, remarkably like a pet bird with a sleepy 
disposition and an absurdly long, slender tail. The tail 
reminds one of Euclid's definition of a line, "length with- 
out breadth." The goose flower has other common 
names, such as swan, duck and pelican flower. 
The goose flower should be grown under glass, and 
one writer naively suggests that it is "most suitable for 
large structures," owing to its pronounced odor. It is 
easily propagated by means of cuttings taken from well 
matured wood in early Spring. It should be planted in a 
bed of good soil, in a warm house where it can be con- 
veniently trained up pillars, rafters or a trellis. It is not 
well adapted for pot culture. — Review. 
