162 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
To whatever extent a cemetery is carried on under 
modern ideas of lawn plan, ornamental planting and 
landscape embellishment, just so much will a nur- 
sery be an actual advantage in its improvement. 
The fact of being able to propagate an abundance 
of material, or to test new varieties as to their adapt- 
ability to soil and climate, while most important 
and eminently desirable possibilities, they do not 
equal the fact that the nursery provides a means of 
so growing the planting material, that a successful 
growth after transplanting into final location is from 
practical experience almost an assured fact. All 
gardeners realize the value of this point. The nur- 
sery affords such opportunities for successive trans- 
planting, and ultimate selection of the very best by 
comparison in the rows, that its benefits are soon 
realized in the appearance of the new plantings in 
the grounds, and ultimately in the fine constitutions 
and thriftiness of the shrubs and trees that have had 
the benefit of such treatment. True economy and 
good management demand that due consideration 
be given to this question, and it is an acknowledged 
fact that wherever such nurseries have been estab- 
lished in our cemeteries, they have been found to 
contribute very largely, not only to the increased 
attractiveness of the grounds but to harmonious 
and consistent treatment in the whole landscape 
scheme. The nursery helps to obliterate chance 
effects and to introduce the certainty of being able 
to work to any desired results contemplated by the 
general plan. 
P ERIODICALLY there appears in the public 
press discussions pro and con on the subject 
of earth burial, its merits and demerits; and 
this has probably been a fruitful subject for dif- 
ference of opinion since this method of disposing of 
human remains supplanted other methods. That 
the soil is a most wonderfully active reagent in the 
reduction of organic matter to its component ele- 
ments everybody has had more or less opportunity 
of practically demonstrating, and on this the great 
medical authorities are a unit. But, unfortunately, 
in reading the opinions of the medical authorities 
there seems to be certainly two sides to the ques- 
tion as regards the cemetery in its relation to pub- 
lic health. There is this to be said however that 
conditions of soil, as to quality, location and dis- 
tribution, vary so much that an opinion, correct for 
one situation may be more or less incorrect for 
another, and the mechanical energy of the soil in 
its work of absorption and reduction, also varying 
according to the composition of the soil, also accounts 
for much divergence of opinion. A decided sentiment 
is gradually taking root, however, against the use 
of such heavy and time-defying caskets as are now 
employed for the burial of the dead and lighter ma- 
terial and even wicker-work coffins are being openly 
advocated. It has perhaps been well said, that there 
is far more danger to public health in the ofttimes 
necessary opening of graves wherein the earth has not 
been permitted to do its work, than in the case 
where absorption and purification by nature’s meth- 
ods have had free scope. To those favoring earth 
burial the prejudice against early contact of the re- 
vered remains with mother earth, is but a tempor- 
ary one. A little calm thought and reasoning un- 
seats it. Sooner or later, prejudice or no prejudice, 
nature finally disposes of the soulless body and fre- 
quently circumstances arise to compel the wish that 
nature had been left to her own methods. What- 
ever the means of disposition of our lifeless forms, 
absolute diffusion by natures’ chemistry is the final 
result, and the retarding of her processes by human 
ingenuity, in the way of metal cases, sealed cas- 
kets, concrete and brick graves, or costly mauso- 
leums, the result is the same. Dust we are and to 
dust we must return, is the unchangeable law. 
T HE functions of art commissions or committees 
in our large cities, appointed to decide upon 
the merits of proposed public art, its location, 
appropriateness, etc., thus far appears to be little 
understood by the appointive power, if we may 
judge from the average personnel of existing com- 
missions, or some of the results of their work. 
That such commissions are necessary is an accepted 
fact, and is a matter insistently urged by this 
journal. But it was expected that, when it was 
recognized that a commission qualified to make 
decisions on questions of public art was a necessity 
in our art growth, those in whose hands the appoint- 
ments lay would themselves be qualified to make 
such appointments. This, it may safely be said, 
has not been realized in a proper degree. In such 
commissions the great question to be decided is the 
paramount one of art, no matter in what relation, 
art is the governing principle. And a due and 
proper consideration of the art principle, as it 
relates not only to the present and its immediate 
object, but to all time, demands broad-minded, 
highly gifted artists as the backbone of a commis- 
sion, fortified by laymen of recognized qualifica- 
tions. On the subject of the proposed Lafayette 
monument to be presented to Paris, the names pub- 
lished as a committee to select a design should not 
receive public confidence tor so important an un- 
dertaking, unless it is definitely known that great 
artists are to be consulted. American art cannot 
afford to be submitted to such risks of foreign ridi- 
cule as these preliminary movements suggest as 
possible. 
