26 
PARK AND CCA\CTCRY. 
for service in the forests, plantations, and gardens 
of the British empire; that among other good things 
quinine has been cheapened to the world through 
their agency, that the Island of Jamaica has been 
stimulated as a tropical fruit centre through them, 
and that the botanical economies and garden sci- 
ence of the world centers there. The British Par- 
liament would no more permit a commissioner of 
works to interfere with their directorship than it 
would permit him to interfere in Hyde Park or 
pull down the Tower of London. His function 
and the function of his office is such as may easily 
be assumed by any city controller, or other munici- 
pal body controlling finances. 
The spectacle presented by some of the park 
boards operating in the various States is unique in 
the world. The park board where I write has never 
contained a single man who knows anything about 
a park, or a plant it contains. 
Politics have no more business in a public park 
or garden than they have in the management of 
the geological survey or the management of a 
College. 
Enough has been seen of extravagance in de- 
sign and management. 
Let the mayors and common councils have 
power to employ good city gardeners from the be- 
ginning. There are numbers of them in America 
that have more force, knowledge and ability in such 
matters than all of the park commissioners of the 
country put together. Place your men under such 
city department as best suits you, let them advise 
you, give them power to employ and discharge 
their men, if you expect them to be obeyed. Don’t 
surround them with spies, bums, and toadies, and 
my word for it, we will soon lead on the park ques- 
tion. 
To recapitulate somewhat, don’t be extrav- 
agant and spend millions on land to grow an un- 
manageable lot of taxes for generations to come, 
but cut according to your cloth. 
Remember the rising generation, they need 
educating in the management and uses of public 
grounds, and in forestry. They can learn about 
plants better in parks than on paper. 
Remember, finally, that you can reach out to 
the country for cheap and good farm lands more 
and more readily every year, and that you can 
often buy a farm and make a park for less than 
some ornamental commissions spend upon junket- 
ings and preliminaries. Many a good farm can 
be bought near country towns for less than $ioo 
per acre today. Then why spend thousands in the 
courts and in condemnation proceedings? Such 
paper work doesn’t provide recreation for the 
people. 
Trenton, N. J. James Mac Pherson. 
Oak Grove, Cemetery, Bath, Haine. 
From the accompanying illustrations even more 
than the text of this article, it will be seen that they 
are not deficient in taste and skill applied to land- 
scape work in Cemetery arrangements, “away down 
east in Maine.” 
The city of Bath, for a century leader of the 
world in wooden ship building, singularly enough, 
while producing year after year the most graceful 
and beautiful of clipper ships, paid but little atten- 
tion to any, save the simplest of landscape work a- 
bout its homes and cemeteries, until some fifteen 
years ago when modern ideas began to animate its 
citizens, and, among the first results, was the in- 
ception of a plan which, under Bath’s present super- 
intendent of Cemeteries, has made Oak Grove one 
of the show places of the State. 
In this gem of a “City of the Dead,” located in 
the western surburb of the city of about 8000 pop- 
ulation are 40 acres — only one half acre being laid 
out for single graves — originally wood pasture and 
swamp or meadow land. Through its centre now 
runs the public road bordered by a luxuriant growth 
of Norway spruce hedge, and from which gently ris- 
ing to a considerable elevation are the two sections 
of the Cemetery, east and west. 
Of the 40 acres, seven are in lakes and running 
water, the water chain extending north and south 
parallel with the city road, and on the west side the 
two large lakes, being superbly framed in extensive 
lawns of well clipped turf gently sloping to their 
shores. The lakes are separated by an avenue, 
shaded by elms and maples of a dozen years growth 
and the grass borders being, in summer, decorated 
with rustic baskets filled with flowering plants and 
vines, and also by parterres of flowers and decora- 
tive plants, coleus being extensively and tastefully 
employed. A handsome rustic bridge crosses the 
south lake, while in the north are small islands con- 
nected by little bridges and containing rustic vine 
VIEW IN OAK GROVE CEMETERY, BATH, ME. 
