PARK AND CEMETERY 
and Landscape Gardening. 
Vol. XVI. Chicago, April, 1906. No. 2 
cMunidpal Cleaning. 
A good example was set by the mayor of Norfolk, 
Va., when by proclamation he set apart April ii as 
Municipal Cleaning Day, in which he asked the citizens 
to observe the occasion by cleaning up their yards, 
beautifying their premises, and reporting infraction of 
health ordinances and other common lapses. The 
mayor is also President of the Board of Health, and 
thus should be an efficient official in urging the ob- 
servance of his own proclamation. However, the idea 
is a good one, and should be studied by all officials 
having the authority to promote like proceedings. Such 
authoritative propositions carry weight, and once set 
going in practical working order, might easily become 
fixed municipal habits, year by year becoming more 
useful in creating clean and beautiful cities. 
^ ^ ^ 
Frontage *^ights on Country ^oads. 
We have come across a question in connection with 
rural improvements which appears an important one. 
The rights of the property owner on the public roads 
are clearly not definitely understood even by the aver- 
age lawyer, to say nothing of the layman. One man will 
claim cultural rights in front of his property from the 
fence line to the roadway proper, and will cultivate 
crops accordingly. Another denies the right. When 
muddy and bad roads come with their usual regularity 
at certain seasons of the year, then everybody’s traffic 
turns from the roadway proper into any portion of the 
highway which promises better travel. Now to make 
the matter short, it is obvious that driving on plowed 
and cultivated land, unless in the depth of winter with 
a heavy snow blanket, is practically impossible, so it 
is evident that the property owner who keeps his side 
of the roadway in grass or lawn as an improvement, 
and grass makes an almost ideal road border, is at a 
decided disadvantage and is practically prohibited from 
mintaining a grass frontage to his property. In con- 
sultation with a country legal official it was admitted 
that an owner had the right to put in cultivated crops 
in the unoccupied road limits, but it was denied that 
he had the right to prevent traffic over his roadway 
lawn, another of the innumerable conundrums, which 
lawyers are so loth to unravel. We know of an in- 
stance developing these anomalous conditions ; within 
a mile east and west of the farm in question, potatoes, 
grain and strawberries have been continually grown up 
to the travelled track, but these same growers have 
maliciously insisted upon their right to drive over the 
whole length of the grass fronted farm when they 
choose to assume that the sod is preferable to the 
mud, and with the consequent damage to both appear- 
ance and grass. We should be glad to know from any 
of our readers what their country road laws require 
on this important question, considered in relation to 
maintaining sightly farm frontages. 
^ ^ 
Education by Railroad. 
The vast amount of good that has been done by seed 
specials in educating the farmers along the western 
railroads makes the cost an insignificant matter. The 
railroads will get in the near future a heavy dividend 
from the investment. As a matter of fact, in the ef- 
ficient manner in which these trains have been equipped 
and technically manned, it has simply been the bring- 
ing of the agricultural college to the farmer, giving 
him an opportunity to test, practically, the latest dis- 
coveries and experiences in the profitable growing of 
crops. There has also been another method adopted by 
certain of the trunk lines, which is having immediate 
and well-lasting effects — that of establishing permanent 
farms under expert farmers in favorable locations. 
This affords a practical lesson in what the land of the 
locality is capable of, under proper care and culture, 
and makes the agricultural development of the West 
one of more rapid progress. It is education and en- 
couragement at one and the same time, and will be 
the means of promoting a better class of farming, and 
of settling the lands with a more progressive popula- 
tion. 
yf ^ ^ 
The Congressional Free Seed Distribution. 
The Congressional free seed distribution which has 
been growing into greater disrepute as the years have 
passed, is in a fair way of being entirely discontinued 
at an early date, provided the public exerts itself to 
that end. The item in the Appropriation Bill cover- 
ing the expense for 1907 has been stricken out by 
the committee, but of course it might be reinstated in 
the passage of the bill through the House, if its friends 
in Congress prove more forceful than its enemies. 
By the abuse of the original intent of the measure, it 
has become a useless expenditure of public money, 
doing no practical good to anybody, although having 
a host of friends among those who are gratified at 
the receipt of a few packages of usually very common 
seeds from their representatives at Washington. Its 
uselessness has been fairly established, and it behooves 
every reader interested in the use of public funds for 
beneficial purposes to write to his representatives, state 
and local, at Washington, urging them to cast nega- 
tive votes when this item comes before them. 
