trees will usually furnish conclusive evi- 
dence, for if the trees are infested the 
characteristic work in the bark, as illus- 
trated in the bulletins , of the Bureau of 
Entomology, will be easily recognized. 
The next thing to do is to determine the 
extent of the infestation, the kind of trees 
involved, and the facilities for disposing of 
the timber by sale, free use, or direct ex- 
pense. Then the superintendent should re- 
port the facts to an expert and ask for 
advice and recommendations. If he will 
then proceed without delay to dispose of 
the infestation according to instructions 
given him, success in checking or com- 
pletely controlling the pest is almost cer- 
tain to follow. 
TWO 
The question of cemetery taxation has 
come strongly to the front in recent years 
in attempts in several states to levy vari- 
ous forms of taxes for local improvements 
against cemetery organizations. 
In two of the most important suits of 
this nature recently decided cemeteries 
have been declared not subject to taxation. 
The Court of Appeals of Kentucky has 
recently handed down a decision declaring 
Cave Hill Cemetery not liable for street 
improvements, and Mt. St. Mary’s Cem- 
etery in Kansas City, Mo., has recently 
won a legal contest to tax it for sewer tax 
bill. 
The opinion of Chief Justice Hobson in 
the Kentucky case (156 Ky., p. 599) is as 
follows : 
George W. Gosnell received an apportionment 
warrant from the city of Louisville against the 
property of the Cave Hill Cemetery Company for 
paving with brick a portion of the carriage way 
of Payne street. The amount of the warrant was 
,$1,115.49. He brought this suit against the Ceme- 
tery Company to subject the abutting land to its 
payment. The Cemetery Company answered in 
substance that it was a quasi public corporation 
without stockholders, empowered to conduct a ceme- 
tery, not held for private or corporate profit; that 
all of its lands and property were held and used 
under perpetual trust for cemetery purposes; that 
a part of the property sought to be subjected was 
occupied by the United States National Cemetery; 
that the enforcement! of the lien would be a viola- 
tion of the general statutes of the state and the 
acts of Congress prohibiting the violation of grave- 
yards; that by an act of March 9, 1S54, it was 
provided that the corporation might acquire by gift 
devise or purchase not exceeding '300 acres of land 
and that all lands acquired by it should be per- 
petually held and used for the purposes of a rural 
cemetery; that by an amendment to this act, it was 
authorized to sell to purchasers burial lots and 
issue to them certificates vesting in them the right 
to use the lots as a burial place for the dead, but 
not to be subject to execution or in any manner 
liable for the debts of the purchaser; that all the 
lands in the cemetery grounds should be forever 
exempt from) taxation; that one or more soldiers 
of the United States were buried on the land set 
apart to the United States National Cemetery; 
that! the land sought to be subjected lies wholly 
within the grounds of the cemetery which under the 
charter and deed from the city of Louisville is to 
bo perpetually held and used for a cemetery; that 
the grounds are enclosed by a permanent wall 18 
inches thick and 9 feet high made of vitrified brick 
ladd in cement; that the land sought to be subjected 
has been graded and prepared for use as burial lots; 
that shrubbery, trees and ornamental plants have 
been set out and are growing thereon; that some 
graves are upon the land, and that the land cannot 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
If upon locating an infested area, it is 
found to extend beyond park boundary into 
adjacent privately owned timber or the na- 
tional forests, co-operation or at least con- 
certed action is required, because an im- 
portant center of infestation is a menace 
to the living timber within a radius of ten 
to twenty miles. 
If the timber of a national park is 
healthy, and centers of infestation are 
found in adjacent forests within a radius 
of ten to twenty miles, the park superin- 
tendent should notify the owners. If, for 
any reason, the owners cannot dispose of 
the infestation, the park officials should 
help to do it just as they would help in 
fighting a fire that was threatening the 
be lawfully used or occupied by a purchaser with- 
out injuring the wall enclosing the cemetery or 
interfering with or mutilating the grave or graves 
and gravestones included in it, or without destroy- 
ing the only entrance to the cemetery from Payne 
street; that over 43,000 of the dead are buried in 
the cemetery, and that an entrance into it from 
Payne street is necessary for the proper use and 
maintenance of the cemetery; that by reason of the 
premises, the city had no power to make the cost 
of the improvement of Payne street a charge upon 
the abutting property used as a cemetery or to 
subject the property, or any part thereof, to sale. 
The plaintiff demurred to the answer. The circuit 
court overruled the demurrer to the answer, but 
intimated that though the land could not be sub- 
jected the cemetery company might be required 
to pay the apportionment warrant. There was an 
issue between the parties as to how much of the 
cost of building the street should be apportioned 
to the Cemetery Company, but this w r as settled by 
an agreed order by which Gosnell recovered of the 
city of Louisville $595.32; and it was agreed that 
the balance of the warrant, to-wit: $520.17, was the 
correct proportion of the contract price which should 
be calculated against the land of the Cave Hill 
Cemetery Company; but it was stipulated that this 
judgment should not operate or be construed in any 
way as an admission by the company that it or its 
land or its funds were in any manner liable for 
the balance of the apportionment warrant. The 
plaintiff filed an amended petition in which he 
alleged that the Cemetery Company had funds on 
hand more than sufficient to pay the claim. The 
Cemetery Company demurred to the amended peti- 
tion; its demurrer was overruled. It then filed 
an answer in which it alleged that it was en- 
gaged in the improvement and ornamentation of the 
cemetery, and that it received money from the 
sale of burial lots, also money from lot owners, 
to be used exclusively in the annual care of their 
respective lots and graves; that its revenues were 
sufficient to satisfy its running expenses only by 
economy and that all the money it received was 
dedicated to the care and upkeep and beautifying 
of the cemetery. The circuit court sustained a 
demurrer to its answer and entered a judgment 
whereby he adjudged the plaintiff a lien on the 
property of the cemetery for $520.17, with interest 
and cost, excepting out of the judgment the land 
conveyed to the United States National Cemetery, 
it was further adjudged that it appearing to the 
Court that the lot of land against which the lien 
was adjudged is enclosed as part of a burial 
ground of the dead, the same should not be sold 
by the Commissioner at public sale; but that it 
appearing that the Cemetery Company had more 
than sufficient funds accumulated as a surplus, it 
was adjudged that it within 20 days pay into court 
a sum of money sufficient to satisfy the decree. 
The Cemetery Company appeals. 
In Louisville vs. Nevin, 10 Bush, 549, suit was 
brought to subject the land of a cemetery to a 
street assessment. Refusing to subject the property, 
the court said: 
“The chancellor will not decree that to be sold 
which cannot lawfuly be used for the ordinary pur- 
poses to which property of a like character is 
commonly applied, and especially when there is 
no imaginable beneficial use to which it can be 
9 
park. In a like manner the federal and pri- 
vate owners of healthy timber adjacent to 
a park should help dispose of any exten- 
sive infestation in the park, because it may 
be more of a common menace than a forest 
fire. 
If this policy of co-operation for the gen- 
eral good is adopted, and the essential re- 
quirements for successful control are 
strictly adhered to for a few years by the 
officials of the national parks, the national 
forests, and the principal private owners, 
the damage to living timber on the parks 
and adjacent lands will be reduced to a 
minimum, and ultimately thousands of dol- 
lars in commercial and aesthetic values will 
be saved for every dollar of public or pri- 
vate money expended. 
CASES 
put by the purchaser w’hich would not subject him 
to punishment under the penal statutes of the 
states. Section 26, Article 17, Chapter 29, of the 
General Statutes reads as follows: : 
“Any person who shall wilfully mutilate the 
graves, monuments, fences, shrubbery, ornaments, 
grounds, or buildings in or inclosing any cemetery 
or place of sepulchre; or shall violate the grave 
of any person by wilfully destroying, removing, 
or injuring the head or footstone, or the tomb over 
or the inclosure protecting : any grave, or by digging 
into or plowing over or removing any ornament, 
shrubbery, or flower placed upon any grave or lot, 
shall be fined not less than ten nor more than 
one hundred dollars or imprisonment not exceed- 
ing six months, or both, as a jury may determine. 
“If the lot in question was sold, the pur- 
chaser could not use it for any of the purposes 
for which town-lots are ordinarily used without 
subjecting himself to the penalties denounced by 
the foregoing statute and making the court a 
particeps criminis in his offense. If it be said that 
the purchaser must take care of himself, it will 
be sufficient answer that the court ought not to 
offer that for sale which it will hot allow to be 
used by the purchaser for any purpose that can be 
of the slightest value to him. The city had com- 
plete authority to contract for the work but had 
no authority to make it a charge on the abutting 
porperty, and is therefore liable to the contractor 
for the price of his work. (Murphy vs. City of 
Louisville, 9 Bush. 189).“ 
The statute quoted is still in force and is now 
Section 1336 Kentucky Statutes. In that case it 
appeared that the lot was filled with graves and 
that the trustee had not funds in his hands be- 
longing to the trust with which to pay the 
assessment. It does not appear here that the lot 
sought to be subjected is filled with graves; but 
we do not regard this as material, for the reason 
that the statute protects the monuments, fences, 
shrubbery and ornaments no less than the graves; 
and the purchaser would be liable for the same 
penalties if he disturbed these as he would be 
if he disturbed a grave. The purpose of the 
statute is to protect the cemetery and not merely 
the graves in it. The question came before this 
court again in Colston vs. Eastern Cemetery Co., 
12 R. 7G2. In that case, the Cemetery Company 
was incorporated in the year 1854, and by its 
charter was exempt from sale for any cause under 
an execution or decree, but by an act of March 
24, 1882, cemetery property was made liable for 
assessment for a street improvement in Louisville. 
This court adhered to the conclusion reached in 
Louisville vs. Nevin, and held the amendatory 
statute not operative as the charter of the cor- 
poration was granted before the act of 1856. 
It concluded its opinion with these words: 
“It must be conceded that in a large city like 
Louisville, the existence of burial grounds be- 
come a matter of necessity and if not placed 
under corporate control, where money may be in- 
vested and 1 donated for the purchase and improve- 
ment of grounds to be used for cemeteries, the 
expense for such a purpose would be a public 
burden, and hence the state is, or should always 
be, ready to encourage the creation of such cor- 
porations, not cnly to lessen the rate of taxation, 
but to invest the corporate body with the power to 
IMPORTANT CEMETERY TAX 
