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PARK AND CEMETERY. 
disturbing effects on others, but the final efforts to 
preserve the body from the natural decay which the 
immutable laws of nature decree must sooner or 
later occur. So that now that funeral reform has 
become, if we may use the term, a live issue, every 
phase of the subject is attracting attention, and 
becoming the object of attack from every source 
crediting itself with authority to speak on the 
subject. It is to the credit of the cemetery au- 
thorities that practical work in this direction owes 
its inception to them. The steadily increasing 
sentiment against the Sunday funeral has found 
practical expression in the new rules of many 
prominent cemeteries, prohibiting, so far as it may 
be judicious, burials on that day. In the present 
effort to reform funeral practices and observances, 
and to bring such functions into accord with en- 
lightened public opinion, it is possible that the 
cemetery may yet again be an important factor. 
When the opinion has crystallized concerning the 
desirability, upon sanitary grounds, of allowing 
mother earth to have access more readily to our 
lifeless remains, and so to carry out nature’s laws in 
her own beneficent way, cemetery rules will quickly 
follow to keep in step with the march of a higher 
intelligence. 
T HE more one sees of the forlorn looking school 
yard the less becomes the doubt as to the 
possibility of there being children in our 
cities’ slums who have never seen the green grass, 
and this is reported as fact by many of the devoted 
laborers in such vineyards. It is somewhat difficult 
to realize in our great United States that, with its 
wealth of plant life and prairie, the bare and bar- 
ren school yard in our cities, to say nothing of our 
country places, could possibly exist. Yet the 
lamentable fact remains that very little attention 
has until the present time been given to what is 
termed “nature study” for the young, and that 
bleak, and bare, and uninviting school yards are 
yet the rule and not the exception. Arbor Day 
has already awakened a vast interest all over our 
land, and its possibilities are still in their infancy. 
It is to be hoped that as each appointed day comes 
round one of the special observances shall be the 
planting of the school yard, where appropriate. 
And while this is a guarded term, it is difficult to 
believe that any school yard exists where a little 
planting or a stretch of lawn could not be made 
available for much good. We urge park and ceme- 
tery officials, both, whenever proper so to do, to 
exercise themselves to the utmost in lending a 
hand in this great and good work. Left to the 
school authorities or teachers alone, the best results 
are not probable; zeal can never take the place of 
skill and experience. But hand in hand with local 
experts in planting, school authorities with teachers 
and scholars, can transform their surroundings into 
gardens of instruction and delight. Where school 
funds are available, an expenditure for professional 
advice will give large returns. 
E VEN the intelligent are apt to underrate the 
status of the landscape architect or gardener, 
as he may choose to style himself, and in 
one sense this is chiefly due to association. The 
difference in the necessary qualifications between 
the designer of a park and the man who sets out 
the planting material is seldom considered by the 
casual observer, that "is to say the public generally, 
and the landscape designer and the gardener are 
placed in the same category. The phenomenal 
growth in material things of the country has not 
been conducive to a development of the faculty of 
discrimination, where thinking, outside of personal 
interests, is demanded for a proper classification of 
qualifications. It is from this cause that we read of 
numbers of banquets and public gatherings, car- 
ried out to mark the completion of great under- 
takings, wherein the financial problem involved in 
success is the only theme worthy of mutual admira- 
tion; while the genius, the professional skill, the un- 
requited devotion to labor and study which went 
into the design and carrying out of the work is en- 
tirely overlooked. This is a common experience 
which, however, happily in time reacts. The same 
experience is common in our public park affairs. 
We are constantly noting what this or that park 
commissioner has done or is doing, but very little 
about the man who is developing the work to the 
best advantage, and by ofttimes rare skill and ac- 
quirements, creating effects impossible but for that 
individual skill and acquirements. The more one 
considers the work of park and landscape develop- 
ment the broader appears the field of knowledge 
and experience required for its successful practice. 
Then add to this the fact that a deep artistic sense 
must be the especial gift of the landscape designer, 
and we have the fundamentals of a profession of 
high degree. It is gratifying to think that the field 
for this profession, rapidly coming to the front, is 
a broad one, which will offer improving and in- 
creasing opportunities as the years roll by. Like 
the other constructive and developing professions 
of this country, it will grow in importance in pub- 
lic estimation, on the one hand when its members 
become united in aims and interests and conse- 
quently assertive, and on the other when a little 
more leisure is a part of the individual and collect- 
ive life, giving opportunity and inclination to ex- 
tend habits of thought beyond the personal domain. 
