1 26 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
sition from blind and selfish land owners can be 
readily discounted by the knowledge that public 
opinion and public act can be relied on to subdue 
it. We live in a poor age for the cultivation of 
selfish ideas, and the examples of beneficence in the 
line of memorial parks and public benefactions 
stimulate philanthropic activity. The improvement 
of the public school grounds has been often sug- 
gested in these columns, and their availability for 
recreative purposes for other children than the im- 
mediate scholars is being considered, at least for 
the period of school vacation. Such an idea might 
be commendable, but only as a makeshift. Every 
large city must take steps to provide sufficient open 
areas for the health and welfare of its citizens; the 
times demand it; and the school yards should be 
improved most certainly, but on lines that will 
meet the progressive ideas of those whose life work 
is the education of our children. The barren spot 
now generally denoting the school yard carries 
nothing elevating or restful in its appearance The 
change is too abrupt from the Elysian fields through 
which the children have been passing in their morn- 
ing exercises to the unkempt patches which greet 
them as they leave the schoolhouse. 
INSTRUCTIVE PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 
The writer of this article has for years pointed 
out with clearness that public grounds should be 
planted in such manner that a marrying of beauty 
and instruction should be consummated. It has not 
at all been realized. In the planting of grounds in 
the natural style two methods of grouping are 
common. One may be termed extremely hetero- 
geneous, and composed of common nursery stock 
often supplied and planted by contract. The other 
frequently attempted may be styled the scientific 
style of grouping, much more comprehensive, and 
abounding more fully with representative beauty. 
In the hands of a master it ought in the nature of 
things to yield a maximum of variety, a plethora of 
loveliness. 
It has been largely confined to gardens or parks 
for instruction, commonly called botanic gardens 
and arboretums. They have succeeded admirably 
in bringing together vast aggregations of material, 
much of it useful, but often with a large percentage 
which would be better excluded from a park pic- 
ture. Close and careful selection has been neg- 
lected, and the result has been correspondingly un- 
satisfactory. Groups in such grounds have been 
based upon the genus or the order , both of which 
are commonly monotonous individually, and line- 
ally disposed more heterogenous collectively than 
the selections of the nurseryman. This circum- 
stance has led to the retention of the grouping of 
the ancients in all the botanic gardens. They have 
divisions for trees, for shrubs, for herbs, for bog 
plants, for water plants, for medicinal plants, and 
so on, widely separated, and without the least re- 
lation to any comprehensive sequence or artistic ef- 
fect. It is difficult for the advanced student to 
connect them, and impossible for the novice. Ac- 
cidently one may see the herbs of an order used to 
embellish the trees and shrubs, but such affinity of 
planting is the exception, and cannot indeed be 
carried consistently through the orders. They often 
lack trees, or shrubs, or herbs. In any climate of 
the world they are sure to prove an incomplete se- 
ries. They are defective either for purposes of 
instruction or embellishment. They should have 
been abandoned long ago as the basis of a garden 
group. They are too narrow, and a striving after 
the unattainable. 
A group of plants intended for ornamental pur- 
poses needs variety of form and colors, harmony, 
contrast and prolonged changeableness of display. 
A single genus, or a single order rarely or never 
affords these essentials, and a whole composed of 
defective parts must be itself defective. 
If anyone will examine the multitude of arbi- 
trary plant groups proposed by scientific men he 
will soon be convinced that they are but rarely 
adapted to the production of a well balanced pic- 
ture on the ground. As dabs of paint on a plane 
of paper they are dotty, but may make a brave 
show. When they project their discords of form 
on the living landscape they are horrid. 
In our climates, however, three or four thousand 
or less of select and variable species may be grown, 
and disposed in some fifty groups representing nu- 
merous tribes, together embracing all that is most 
desirable for embellishing the landscape and stamp- 
ing it with character and beauty. These again are 
resolved into six divisions in the prolific sub-trop- 
ical and tropical regions, or four divisions in tem- 
perate regions where the lilies, palms, grasses and 
ferns are non-arboreal. 
The elaboration of planting material on such a 
basis artistically must necessarily combine instruc- 
tion, for it would correspond with the teachings of 
the simplest and best of the scientific schools. 
The task is not one to be undertaken lightly by 
beginners. 
The mere arrangement of the names correctly 
and in sequence is no light labor, but when in ad- 
dition it is undertaken to make each group not 
only perfect in itself, but a component part of a 
perfect whole presenting four or five distinct phases 
of coloring during a season, one of which may be 
in unison over the whole area during any summer 
