PARK AND CEMETERY. 
Here, indeed, it is one great favorite, espe- 
cially for street planting and other loca- 
tions where the conditions for tree growth 
are favorable. In Brooklyn I have planted 
the oriental sycamore in large numbers for 
the past few years, in many cases under 
the most adverse conditions, and always 
found it to be hardy and quick growing. 
Last year we planted a large number of 
these species in a section where the at- 
mosphere is literally filled with sulphur 
fumes and other injurious gases, and still 
not one of the trees failed. I know that 
in other sections of the East, notably 
Washington and Philadelphia, the oriental 
sycamore has also been planted very ex- 
tensively and has proven quite desirable. 
In view of these experiences and consider- 
ing your partial success, I would say in 
reply to your letter that you go ahead 
planting and give the tree a chance. 
As to the difference between the oriental 
sycamore and the occidental, we find the 
occidental is of slower growth and partic- 
ularly subject to the disease Gleosporeum 
nevisequum, which attacks the leaves and 
twigs, causing the former to curl up and 
drop prematurely. The native specimens 
in this section of the country have seri- 
ously suffered from this disease within the 
past few years, while our oriental speci- 
mens have only shown slight attacks from 
time to time. 
In accordance with your suggestion, I 
shall have your letter published in Park 
and Cemetery and call for opinions from 
the superintendents of the country. 
J. J. Levison, 
Secretary. 
of the human race for centuries to enclose 
them all, and then they would not be as 
useful or beautiful or as permanent as 
nature’s own banks. In the same way the- 
cities are striving to do the unneeded thing, 
because some believe it best. Cities are- 
spending large sums of money in just this 
way, until the burden of taxation has be- 
come hard to bear. Much of this will end 
when cities strive for a balance of the 
force within the city. In this balance of 
city force, recreation will play a most im- 
portant part, more so because it has been 
neglected and ignored in the past. This 
neglect is the cause of much of the sin 
and misery and pain and poverty in the 
midst of those who live in cities. 
Play has seemed such a 'trivial affair 
that until lately no one has taken it seri- 
ously as a- factor in city life. A man said 
to me within a week, “There is too much 
play; people would be better off if there 
was less.” True there is too much exploited, 
expensive, constructive, normal and natural 
play. I have often wished that I might 
gain the attention of the people long enough 
to demonstrate to them what real play is 
and the part it must take in the building 
up of life within a city, and to show how 
much there is that comes under the name 
of recreation that is no more like recrea- 
tion than black is like white. 
Recreation in its broadest sense is what 
we do during leisure time, that time when 
we do as we please. Work we must, or 
starve, and so work controls us as superior 
outside force. 
Now, recreation is essentially different 
from these, for during those hours, we 
are free, no outside compelling force con- 
trols us, and the forces that do control us 
are from the inside out, while work and 
study are from the outside in. Recreation, 
then, is the natural growth. It responds 
to the call of the muscle, the organs of the 
body, and the functions of the mind and 
spirit, to move that they may grow and' 
live, and like every response to our inner 
consciousness, there comes pleasure and 
joy in the doing of it. The child responds 
more freely and naturally to these calls, 
and is happy in its play and the grown-ups 
will receive just as great happiness in their 
recreation, even though it is not as boister- 
ous if they will respond as freely as the 
child does. 
Not only does recreation mean growth 
and development, but it means refreshment 
and restoration from fatigue and strenuous 
effort; it also means re-creating that which 
has been injured or destroyed in the strug- 
gle for existence. Here then, is the mean- 
ing of recreation, growth, refreshment, 
restoration, and re-creation, and apparently 
it is the only way these things can come 
into our city lives. No wonder then, that 
our cities have come short of their ideals 
when a factor of so much importance has 
not been considered in the equilibrium of 
the force that builds cities. 
MUNICIPAL RECREATION. 
By George A. Parker, Supt, of Parks, 
Hartford, Conn,, in the Hartford Courant. 
When municipal reaction comes into its 
own, it will be found as good a fighting 
machine against weakness, suffering, pov- 
erty and sin of a city as a fire department 
is against fire. It will be found as self- 
supporting as a water department and will 
double the efficiency of the people. This 
is a broad statement that no one will be- 
lieve at present, but in ten years I believe 
it will become a recognized fact. 
At first thought it seems impossible for 
recreation to do so much more than work 
and education have accomplished, which 
heretofore have been considered the great 
constructive forces of machines for the city 
building. Education is considered the 
foundation upon which our governmental 
future rests and work the source of suc- 
cess, and they are rightly so considered, 
but they have failed to accomplish more 
than they have, not because they lack 
power or capacity, but because they are 
out of balance with city life and because 
they did not give the proportionate place to 
recreation that belongs to it. For while 
recreation has not a constructive capacity 
in the same sense as work and study,- yet 
it is the balance-wheel which stores up the 
surplus energy when there is any and gives 
it out when needed. Play is the natural 
balance and produces the desired equilibrium 
between the forces of life, producing as a 
resultant a healthy and natural city. 
The other method of city building is the 
engineering principal of superior dominat- 
ing force with a large percentage for 
safety. 
Last year as I was fixing the banks of 
Park River in Bushnell Park, one of the 
best engineers in the state said to me : 
“You do things no engineer would dare to 
do, and yet they seem to work out all 
right.” “Yes,” I replied, “I seek the bal- 
ance between the force entering into the 
stability of the bank, knowing that when 
I find it* the bank will stay and be most 
beautiful, while the engineer seeks to build 
a structure that will resist the greatest 
forces that will come against it, and then 
add 60 per cent for safety.” 
The engineer's alignments and work are 
based upon a dominating and superior 
force ; ours upon an equilibrium between 
forces. The viewpoints are entirely dif- 
ferent. 
No engineer would make the banks or 
brooks or rivers of the material that na- 
ture makes them. No one would think for 
a moment of making the banks of our 
Connecticut river of the silt that comes 
down in the water, and yet nature does so 
successfully, because she only desired the 
balance of the forces involved. Just im- 
agine what it would mean were an en- 
gineer to build banks of all our rivers and 
brooks. In the same way the builders of 
our cities have tried to plan out what a 
city should be, to establish conditions that 
shall dominate the city for its own good, 
make its righteousness permanent. They 
depend upon intelligence, honesty, efficiency, 
education and hard work, continuous pub- 
lic teaching and other things to bring all 
these about. And all these must be, in 
order to obtain success. They are stones 
with which the city is built, but they are 
loose stones which do not bind together, 
and they are building without mortar; they 
are making bricks without straws. The 
reasoning is logical and contention is 
sound, but their expectations are not realized 
because they depend upon a dominate supe- 
rior force with a large per cent for safety, 
and a city is a living organism, and living 
things are not built that way. Success with 
living things comes with balance of force, 
the same as nature makes the banks of 
our rivers and plants our forests. 
Suppose engineers were to make the 
hanks of all rivers in accordance with their 
theories it would take all the surplus labor 
