66 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
LEGAL. 
CEMETERY COMPANIES CAN 15E SUED FOR NEGLI- 
GENCE. 
The important question was raised in the recent 
case of Long against the Rosedale Cemetery, as to 
whether an incorporated cemetery company could 
be sued for damages alleged to have been caused 
by the negligence of its managers and servants. 
That corporations are liable for the wrongful acts of 
their servants, committed while in the discharge of 
their duties, cannot, as a general proposition, be 
denied. And the United States circuit court holds 
that a cemetery company incorporated under the 
general laws of the state of New Jersey relating to 
cemetery companies, and entitled to the immunities 
of that act, but not shown to enjov any special 
privileges granted under special charter, may be 
sued for the negligent conduct of its managers and 
servants. It says that it may be that this company, 
like many another party sued, has not the means 
from which an execution may be satisfied in the 
manner provided by law, but that inability to re 
spond is not a bar to the recovery of a judgment. 
And it lays special emphasis, in this case, upon the 
fact that the New Jersey legislature has provided a 
way by which judgments against cemetery compan- 
ies may be satisfied from rents, issues, profits, in- 
comes and revenues derived from lands, etc., which, 
upon a proper application, the court would place 
in the hands of a receiver for the purpose of satis- 
fying a judgment. Surely, it declares, the law is 
not brought into contempt by permitting judgment 
to be entered against a cemetery company, when 
there is a possible means by which it may be satis- 
fied. Moreover, the contention, that the company 
is a charitable organization, and, as such, relieved 
from responsibility for the wrongful acts of its ser- 
vants, the court dismisses because it had not at hand 
any means by which it could determine that its pur- 
pose is not to make profit, which is the test to be 
adopted to determine whether an enterprise is char- 
itable or not. And it denies that “consideration of 
decency, and pious reverence for the dead,” should 
prevent such an action being maintained. It says 
that the lands of the company, surrounding the lots 
appropriated for the burial of the dead, are by the 
law exempt from sale under execution, to indis- 
criminate purchasers, for purposes foreign and re- 
pugnant to the purpose to which the whole plot has 
been dedicated; but the same law points out the 
way by which, without doing violence to these nat- 
ural feelings, certain profits and revenues of ceme- 
tery companies may be applied to the payment of 
any judgment which may be recovered against 
them. 
NOTES. 
It is said that 4,200 species of plants are gath- 
ered and used for commercial purposes in Europe. 
Of these 420 have a perfume that is pleasing and 
enter largely into the manufacture of scents and 
soaps. 
# # # 
Last year the output of rubber from Mexico was 
1,000,000 pounds. Hundreds of thousands of 
rubber trees are being planted and in a few years 
most of our supply of rubber will come from that 
country, instead of South America and elsewhere. 
# # # 
The Phillippine islands are very rich in forests 
and contain many valuable woods, many of which 
are practically unknown. There are said to be 
thirty-two tinctorial woods. Among the valuable 
ones is the ebony, and the magkano is said to be 
absolutely indestructible by rot. The forests gen- 
erally remain intact in the interior, except for 
Luzon, where they have been extensively thinned 
out. 
# # # 
M. Serge Belaguine, a Russian explorer of Brazil, 
states in an interview recently published in the 
Gaulois that a few degrees below the equator he 
discovered a forest of flowers that prevented him 
from approaching them. With every deference to 
M. Belaguine, that forest seems to have been dis- 
covered before. Two years ago there appeared in 
a San Francisco paper an account provided by a 
bulb hunter returning from the same region, who 
declared that after noticing in a forest an odor, 
vague and sweet at first, but which increased as he 
advanced, ultimately he reached a clearing, and 
there, straight ahead, was a wilderness of orchids. 
Trees were loaded with them, they trailed on the 
ground in beckoning contortions, dangled from 
branches, fell in sheets and elongated and expanded 
as far as the eye could reach. A breeze passed and 
they swayed with it, moving with a life of their 
own, dancing in the glare of the equatorial sun, 
and as they danced, exhaling an odor that protected 
them more sheerly than a wall. In vain did that 
hunter endeavor to approach. There was a veil of 
perfumed chloroform through which he could see, 
but through which, try as he might, he could not 
pass. It held him back more effectually than 
bayonets, and it was torture to him to see those 
flowers and to feel that before he could reach them 
he must die, suffocated by the very splendors of 
which he was in search, poisoned by floral jewels 
such as no one perhaps had seen before. At the 
time the place was known as the village of demon 
flowers. — Collier's Weekly. 
