PARK AND CEMETERY 
385 
tilation. Improvement in lawn-making is being inves- 
tigated in a series of feeding experiments on lawns wifh 
a view to finding a method of keeping up the grass 
supply without great expense. The chief enemy to 
good lawns is crab grass, which the gardeners of the 
department are convinced is brought out by watering 
at certain times of the day. They are overcoming 
this difficulty by watering at night. The Department 
is also endeavoring to call the attention of the people 
to easy methods of home ornamentation by following 
the simple natural system in the public grounds which 
give object lessons in the use of hardy perennials and 
groups of shrubs. All of the plants and shrubs on the 
grounds are in botanical groups and are all labeled. A 
very important work is being carried on in the school 
garden department. The young women of the Normal 
School are given special horticultural instructions on 
the agricultural grounds and put their experience into 
actual operation by designing plans for the city schools 
and helping the children to carry them out. The school 
garden work has made rapid and encouraging progress 
and the department has recently issued an interesting 
illustrated bulletin telling of the latest phases of this 
work. The Bureau has a five-hundred acre tract 
known as the Arlington Farm, which is used for ex- 
periments and investigation, where some interesting 
work for the prevention of diseases to trees and plants 
from insects is being conducted. A number of bulle- 
tins have been issued on investigations on the methods 
of spraying. 
A prominent feature of the program, which is be- 
coming more important each year consists of the re- 
ports from the delegates of the State Associations, 
which was next on the program. J. E. Miller, of Mat- 
toon, 111., representing the Illinois Association of Cem- 
eteries, was the first delegate to report. He reviewed 
the history of the Illinois organization and told of its 
work for the past year. A bill providing for a perma- 
nent care fund in cemeteries owned by cities was passed 
by the Illinois Legislature through the efforts of the 
Association and three more bills are expected to be 
passed next year. The provisions of these are noted in 
Mr. Miller’s paper at a subsequent session. The Illi- 
nois Association has a membership of about forty and 
expects a large increase during the year. 
George W. Creesy, of Salem, Mass., represented 
the New England Association of Cemetery Superin- 
tendents. This Association covers a large territory 
and the meetings are generally brief visits of a day here 
and there and are more in the nature of fraternal calls 
and informal gatherings. Mr. Creesy expressed the 
opinion that State Association meetings which consist 
of programs somewhat similar to those of the National 
Association were not good policy as they might have a 
tendency to detract from interest in the meetings of the 
larger Association. 
John J. Stephens, of Columbus, Ohio, reported for 
the Ohio State Association of Cemetery Superinten- 
dents and Officials. The Ohio Association in three 
years has reached a membership of sixty. They confi- 
dently expect to almost double this number during the 
coming year. Several of its members have signified 
their intention of joining the National Association and 
Mr. Stephens expressed the opinion that nearly all 
members of State Ascociations would in time join the 
National Body. The chief object of the State Associa- 
tion has been to reach the smaller cemeteries, but it was 
reported that there are still some of the larger ones not 
represented in either the National or State Associations 
who are strongly in need of the teachings of the As- 
sociation. 
. Erank Enrich, of Detroit, spoke briefly of the recent 
organization of the Michigan Cemetery xAssociation, 
which has started out with bright prospects and will 
hold its first regular meeting at Detroit next year in 
conjunction with that of the A. A. C. S. 
A thoughtful and well considered paper on crema- 
tion entitled “The Burning Question,” was read by 
Superintendent Thomas White, Riverside Cemetery, 
Eairhaven, Mass., from which we quote as follows : 
_ The advent of Christianity gave the death-blow to crema- 
tion throughout that part of the world known as Christen- 
dom. It was the belief of the early Christians that the sec- 
ond coming of the Lord would be in the immediate future, 
and that they might see the resurrection of the body. Cre- 
mation need cause no anxiety upon this score, for to quote 
the words of a learned preacher: “It will be just as easy 
for the Almighty to re-create the body from a pile of ashes 
as it will from a pile of dust. Either case will require a mir- 
acle.” 
Why is it that we cling so tenaciously to earth burial with 
its present and future horrors? Which is most shocking to 
a sensitive mind, seeing the casket gently lowered beneath 
the floor of the chapel or wheeled away into an adjoining 
room to undergo the quick process of disintegration by Are, 
or seeing it lowered into the earth? When we have overcome 
the prejudice of two thousand years the benefits of crema- 
tion are obvious. According to the opinion of some superin- 
tendents with whom I have corresponded, one important 
feature of cremation will be a reform in the way of economy ; 
as one superintendent says, he thinks that the cost of the in- 
cineration might well be taken off the cost of the casket. Not 
the least important will be the economy in the use of land, 
not only in regard to the expense incurred by the necessary 
purchase of a larger lot, but as regards the area of land re- 
quired and occupied for cemetery purposes. The population 
of this country is increasing by leaps and bounds ; but the 
area of ground available for cemetery purposes increases not 
at all. 
What must be the state of the earth in the potter’s field in 
some of our own cemeteries, where bodies are buried five or 
six deep and nearly if not quite touching one another? Sev- 
enty-five thousand bodies lie in one potter’s field. What a 
healthy neighborhood this must be for a city of nearly four 
million of inhabitants? In and around New York there are 
84 cemeteries. Newtown, in the Borough of Queens, N. Y., 
has a cemetery area of 1,800 acres which contains two million 
bodies. Cavalry cemetery. New York, a cemetery of 214 
acres in extent contains 600,000 bodies, 2,800 to the acre. The 
population of New York has increased 260 per cent, during 
the past forty years. I think it safe to prophesy that when 
scientific men have vanquished the germ-carrying mosquito 
they will probably turn their attention to cremation. 
From the time of the erection of the first crematory in the 
United States in 1876, there have been over 24,000 incinera- 
tions and in the leading countries of Europe, during that 
same time, there have been 18,000. Of 25 crematories in the 
