411 
PAIVK AND CEMETERY 
vehicles; improvement or rebuilding of the custom house, now 
situated oni the river outside the walled city ; improvement 
of the Passig river as an artistic feature and as a waterway. 
* * * 
Delegates from eight village improvement societies of 
Rhode Island met at East Greenwich, October 4, and pre- 
pared a prospectus and adopted by-laws for a league of the 
Rhode Island Improvement Societies. As soon as the by- 
laws are ratified by seven associations, a general meeting of 
delegates will be called for the formation of a permanent 
association. The object of the league is to promote harmony 
and unity of effort among all improvement associations and 
allied organizations throughout the state. Organizations 
such as old home associations, public park associations, busi- 
ness men’s associations, natural history societies and good 
roads organizations are eligible to membership. Each society 
belonging to the league is entitled to five delegates to be 
elected annually. Funds will be raised by an annual assess- 
ment of five cents for each member of each society of the 
league. The officers of the temporary organization are ; 
Edwin A. Noyes, East Greenwich, R. I., chairman; W. E. 
Longfellow, of Pawtucket, secretary. President Kenyon L. 
Butterfield, of the Rhode Island Agricultural College at King- 
ston, was also a member of the committee. 
* * ^ 
Charles Mulford Robinson, Rochester, N. Y., has pre- 
pared a report for the city of Colorado Springs and the 
El Paso Good Roads Association of that city, on the develop- 
ment of the streets. Colorado Springs is fortunate in having 
some very wide streets, and Mr. Robinson was engaged to 
come there and make a report on beautifying them. Some 
of the streets are 100 and 140 feet in width, and with very 
light traffic offer excellent opportunities for parking and 
planting. Mr. Robinson makes detailed recommendations for 
most of the streets. Among his recommendations are : — a 
central parking for the principal streets running north and 
south ; planting of only one variety of trees on a street ; 
the elimination of geometrical designs in the planting, and 
the substitution of rounded or oblong clumps of shrubbery, 
and turfing between and outside of car tracks. He also 
urges the use of native planting. Mr. Robinson’s book, 
“Modern Civic Art,” has been adopted as a text book by 
many clubs that are studying that subject, and the author has 
prepared a brief outline of study based on it which recently 
appeared in the Chautanquan. 
*=(!!(: 
Frederick Law Olmsted recently visited Detroit to consult 
with the Municipal Art Commission and other public bodies 
that are planning a comprehensive system of municipal im- 
provements for that city. In a late newspaper interview, Mr. 
Olmsted speaks of the problem as follows : “There is no ques- 
tion that if the city, the steamboat companies, the street car 
companies, and all others interested in having an attractive 
river front, would get together and figure on the problem, 
each with the aim of having the improvements fit harmoniously, 
that it could be done systematically and well, and Detroit 
would have a good river front. As to Cadillac Square, the 
permanent feature is the important thing to be considered. 
It is not merely the question of having grass plots, drinking 
fountains and ornamental trolley poles artistically distributed. 
We must consider the way in which new and important public 
buildings that will, sooner or later, go up in that vicinity 
will line up and face each other. This proposed improve- 
ment will be more purely of an aesthetic sort. As it is now, 
Cadillac Square, with the beautiful county building set down 
among a lot of shacks and inferior buildings, certainly pre- 
sents an incongruous view to the eye of the visitor.” 
The Salem correspondent of the Lynn, Mass., Item pays the 
following tribute to the work of the Beverly Improvement 
Society, Beverly, Mass : “The Garden City is a title to which 
Beverly lays a double claim. In the first place the Creator 
made it a beautiful spot, a neck of land upon whose sandy 
shore old ocean surges on one side, and by whose wooded 
hills placid rivers ebb and flow upon the other side. Man 
destroys much of the beauty that nature freely offers, and it 
came to pass that Beverly was shorn of its attractive spots 
as its many houses and buildings were put up. But along 
toward the beginning of this 20th century people began to 
realize that a thing of beauty adds a great deal of happiness 
to life, even if it can not be a joy forever. Therefore a 
number of prominent Beverlyites banded themselves together 
as the Beverly Improvement society, with the express inten- 
tion of beautifying Beverly. Now the visitor in Beverly first 
notices its pretty gardens and also its street signs. Those 
signs that mark the main highways are conspicuous, yet artis- 
tic, and he who passes may quickly note his road. They 
were given to the town by William D. Sohier. There are no 
back yards in Beverly. That is, there are in Beverly none of 
those dump-like spots behind every house on which the ash 
barrel lies at rest besides the garbage pail, while a bunch of 
old newspapers and old rags play tag over the lot, stumbling 
occasionally over old rusty tin cans or a broken bottle. Oh, 
no, the spot on which the burdock thrived and reared its 
troublesome crop of ‘stickers’ is now adorned with swaying 
dahlias, flowering hollyhocks, fragrant roses and other flowers. 
The plantain farm has been sown to grass and rolled and 
mowed. The homely old backyard fence has been adorned 
with a grape vine, and the honeysuckle and woodbine twine 
about the backyard porch. Shrubbery breaks the angular lines 
and hides homely corners. The garbage pail, the ash barrel, the 
old tin cans and the broken bottle have taken fright and fled 
from sight of the dawning beauty, as evil spirits of night fly 
before the rising sun and the newspapers and the old rags have 
found their way to the junk man.” 
♦ * * 
Damages for Butchering Trees, 
A verdict of much importance to property owners and civic 
improvement workers was recently returned by a jury in 
Judge Park’s division of the circuit court at Kansas City, 
Mo. Mrs. Ella S. Betz was awarded judgment for $200 
against the Kansas City Home Telephone Company, whose 
employes had cut the top out of one of her shade trees. 
The testimony showed that the tree, a fine poplar, six inches 
in diameter, interfered with the telephone wires, and the 
workmen, without consulting Mrs. Betz, chopped out the 
top and center of the tree and it died. This was in May, 
1904. Mrs. Betz sued for $300. Another decision of a similar 
nature is reported in the October issue of Village Improve- 
ment, published by the Moorestown (N. J.) Village Improve- 
ment Association. Mr. N. C. Brown, of Asheville, N. C., 
got a Supreme Court decision that the Asheville Electric 
Lighting Company, even after it had provided itself with the 
permission of the superintendent of streets, afterward ap- 
proved by the board of aldermen, could not ignore his protest 
and cut a tree standing on the outer edge of his sidewalk. 
Mr. Brown sued the company for damages, and the jury 
awarded him a verdict for $499. Of course, the case was 
appealed, but the judgment of the State Supreme Court, as 
summarized by the American Telephone Journal, was that, 
while the city had the power, under its charter, to control 
streets and sidewalks and to remove obstructions when neces- 
sary, it did not, when it condemned land for highway pur- 
poses, acquire a title to the land, but merely a right of way 
over it, so that the plaintiff was still the owner of the tree. 
