PARK 
resenting the handsomest varieties of the 
world. 
Expert gardeners were sent to Australia. 
India, Africa, the Philippine Islands and 
Central and South America, and instructed 
to select the handsomest trees obtainable 
for exterior decoration. 
As many of those chosen were hundreds 
of years old, to transport and replant them 
successfully necessitated the use of a modi- 
fication of the side-box system. For the 
benefit of those who are not familiar with 
this process a moment’s digression, for the 
purpose of explanation, may be permissible. 
After marking out the tree desired, a 
huge knife blade, seven feet in length, is 
first passed around the four sides of the 
tree, making a rectangular cut some dis- 
tance from the base, and seven feet in 
depth. Rich fertilizer is then forced down 
the cuts, and on the outer side of this 
boards are passed. As the side-roots have 
been severed the tree must depend for a 
time upon its bottom-roots for nourish- 
ment, until the wounded and shortened 
ends of the side-roots are trained to draw 
from the fertilizer. This usually requires 
six months. At the expiration of that 
period the tree is again in good health, 
and a slideway is cut down one side, the 
bottom-roots being severed, and a bottom 
board added to the others, thus forming a 
large box. 
In this manner thousands of trees were 
treated, and transported by steamship from 
the farthest corners of the earth to the 
exposition, where they have been success- 
fully replanted on the grounds. Included 
among these are hundreds of rare palms, 
two hundred of which cost $100 each. 
The return of cremation, and its being 
put into use by civilization after the lapse 
of centuries, is due to two things mainly : 
First, the perfection in the last generation 
or two of hot-air furnaces or retorts that 
incinerate without the great conflagration 
that attended the funeral pyre of the 
Greeks and Romans of old ; and, second, to 
the fact that modern thought is laying 
aside old customs as well as prejudices, 
and that the people of today are open to 
conviction and, more and more, are coming 
to stand for those things that best serve 
their day and generation. In the case of 
inhumation, which extends all the way from 
where several persons must be interred in 
the same grave, as in some crowded ceme- 
teries, on through to the ample spaces al- 
lotted when ample funds are in command, 
and to the exclusive interments in the vaults 
of private mausoleums, the process of re- 
turn to nature is slow to the utmost de- 
gree. With incineration, this transforma- 
A definite color scheme entered into the 
plans of Mr. McLaren. 
Under the direction — in this particular — 
of Jules Guerin, the exposition's Master of 
Color, the color of every plant available, 
and its tone-effect upon the exposition in 
general, was taken into consideration. 
All of the exteriors of the buildings of 
the exposition were treated with an excel- 
lent imitation of the old Travertine marble, 
of which so many of the buildings of 
ancient Rome were constructed. This is 
a soft-grayish-pink in tone, and naturally 
many colors would conflict with those 
tints ; so a plan of elimination of some 
of the flowering plants was necessary. 
By a system of rotation, there will never 
An address before the National Cre- 
mation Association , by S. F. Balcom. 
tion is brought about in a short time and 
the ashes remain for disposition as per 
some former provision of our own or sub- 
ject to a selection at the time by those 
nearest to us. The question then comes, 
shall the remains be placed in a metal re- 
ceptacle and stored in a receiving vault, or 
deposited permanently in a columbarium 
where special provision has been made for 
such care, or, if sufficient means are at 
hand, shall they be placed in an urn of 
artistic workmanship and set in a niche in 
a large and elegant columbarium? That 
some have decided to scatter the ashes on 
the ocean waves, and others to scatter them 
over a family lot in the cemetery, or to 
bury them in a grave of a relative, proves 
that the problem has not as yet been satis- 
factorily solved. This lack of a definite and 
satisfactory method is thought to have been 
one reason for the practice of cremation 
not having been more generally accepted, 
and it is with a hope that a method may 
be 'a minute during the ten months’ life of 
the exposition, when all flowering plants 
exposed to view will not be in full bloom. 
The millions of plants on hand have been 
divided into three classes : early blooming, 
summer blooming, and autumn blooming. 
Each of these classes has been carefully 
numbered and subdivided into two por- 
tions, one of which will be planted when 
the time for the class to commence bloom- 
ing arrives, and the other half held in 
reserve. When any single plant shows 
signs of ceasing to bloom, it will be re- 
placed by a duplicate from the reserve sec- 
tion in the nurseries. When the entire 
class is finished blooming, it will be re- 
placed by the second and third divisions, 
each in turn. 
FUTURE 
be had whereby permanent provision may 
be made for the remains and a fit and last- 
ing memorial provided, that the following 
practice is suggested. 
To begin with, a simple method, so inex- 
pensive that almost any family could take 
advantage of it, would be to build a con- 
crete foundation for a family monument, 
and in this foundation provide some rec- 
tangular receptacles in which, from time to 
time, the ashes can be placed and sealed up 
and an inscription placed on the monu- 
ment. This could be repeated on a larger 
scale until an amount were spent equal to 
that found in the very large and elaborate 
works of art in the larger city cemeteries. 
In all of which receptacles could be pro- 
vided in the foundation, or in the base, or 
in the massive portions of the structure. 
Bronze lettering as well as relief art pan- 
els and memorial tablets are coming very 
greatly into use in connection with large 
sections of granite and marble, and recep^ 
THE COLUMBARIUM OF THE 
