196 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
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is what may be called deep. They are frequently 
three feet and more, in their native beds. 
Plantations of white lilies are ever more beauti- 
ful and effective than one, or a -few in each place. 
The lone-sentinel lily stalk no matter how beautiful 
the flowers, fails entirely to convey a full idea of 
the possibilities of many together. Reference in 
this, is to out-door cemetery, park or garden plant- 
ing. It must be borne in mind that white lilies har- 
monize with- all other flowers and are beautifiers to 
masses of foliage formed by other plants. 
Japan has proven the possibilities of Pancra- 
tiums by its pink and scarlet “spider lily.” Mr. 
Peter Henderson said there were no poor relations 
in the lily family, which is gratifying when the na- 
tive spider lily is modestly asserting its claims. 
G. T. Brennan. 
THE WASTE OF LEAVES AND TOPSOIL. 
THE BURNT OFFERING OF LEAVES. 
Every fall the air in suburban places is made 
acrid and thick with the smoke from burning leaves. 
The other day I heard an old gentleman call to a 
friend across the street of a town near New York, 
‘ ‘We shan’t have any pure air any more for a month 
or six weeks. It’s an outrage, and ought to be 
stopped.” Elven so. The places where people live, 
their roads and lawns public and private, must be 
kept neat, and the intrusive and ubiquitous leaves 
cleared away. But why must they be destroyed to 
the loss of a valuable thing and the public incon- 
venience? Are there no horses to be bedded, no 
compost heaps, no manure piles through which the 
leaves can at last be returned to the soil as Nature 
intended? As everybody knows, but few stop to 
think, leaves are a valuable fertilizer, the natural 
provision for preserving and replenishing the soil, 
a loan from the earth which ought to be returned 
to it for its and our maintenance and increase. Yet 
uncountable leaves are yearly burned, not only in 
swept-up heaps in suburban lots and streets, but 
as they lie on the ground in the neighboring woods. 
This is done in the name of neatness, and not only 
are the leaves destroyed, but part of the humus too, 
and the soil is yearly depleted. Will people not 
reflect that this is not only a waste, but like any 
other waste, a foolish one? 
# # * 
THE WASTE OF TOPSOIL. 
Far too seldom does anyone raise a protesting 
voice against the covering up and virtual oblitera- 
tion of topsoil. Topsoil is the compost of humus 
and minerals spread by Nature over the earth in ten 
thousand years; and this precious substance out of 
which vegetation grows which makes possible the 
existence of man and his animals, which produces 
wheat for his bread and timber for his shelter and 
grass for his cattle, is what can be seen obliterated 
under any barren rubbish that is solid wherever 
men have begun to build houses or cut the crust of 
the earth. Topsoil is most commonly buried where 
a house is built, and the clay or gravel from the 
cellar excavation is thrown out. This is done, 
partly because it is cheaper for the time, but mainly 
because it is easier, and people have not yet begun 
to think about the subject. It is true that when the 
house is finished and the yard is graded new top- 
soil has to be hauled in, often at great expense, for 
the lawn to grow upon, but that is no matter; the 
trouble and small expense of removing the topsoil 
from the site of the house and a little distance round 
it and putting it on one side till wanted, has been 
saved, and the owner does not stop to think and 
the builder does not care. 
But cellar excavations are not the only places 
where surface soil is buried alive; wherever there is 
grading and filling we may look to find alluvial deposit 
underneath and debris on the top. For instance, 
in the northern part of New York City, where 
“good dirt” is scarce and costly, there is a tract of 
some acres which happened to slope a few feet 
below the level of the road; so its rich meadow 
loam has been buried under rocks the product of 
neighboring blasting operations, and over them 
thin gravel has been spread on which coarse weeds 
are growing. Before many years the land will be 
cut up into building lots, and then some other place 
will have to be stripped of its surface soil to pro- 
vide something for the grass plots and flower beds 
to grow in. Perhaps the land will sell for just as 
much for building purposes with a coating of rub- 
bish as of fertile soil; but surely it would have been 
wiser and cheaper in the end in these days of ma- 
chinery to have stripped off nine inches or so of the 
meadow to put over the rocks and gravel. There 
seems to be something wanton and wrong in the 
wasting of these resources by which after unknown 
ages, the earth has been made fit for man’s habita- 
tion. The surface soil is a trust that has been ac- 
cumulating for ages in the bank of Nature, for our 
use and that of the generations that come before 
and after, and those who abuse and destroy it are 
betraying their trust and wasting the inheritance of 
posterity. H. A. Caparn. 
At the recent meeting of the American Public 
Health Association at Minneapolis, Minn., resolu- 
tions were passed reciting that the organization be- 
lieves that the presence ot forests is conducive to 
public health, and recommending to all govern- 
ments to set apart such portions of their forests as 
may be practicable for national parks. 
