247 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
There are five crematories altogether in the State of 
New York, however, including the pest-house crema- 
tory on Swinburne Island, and maybe the unclassified 
figures are from these others, and not from Fresh 
Pond. At any rate, the figures don’t agree. 
San Francisco has two crematories, with 645 cre- 
mations in 1900. 
Next comes Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and Phila- 
delphia, with a few smaller cities. 
Now, if a crematory can dispose of nearly two 
bodies per day, as these New York reports seem to 
show, the mere financial side of the question seems 
assured, and what an immense improvement over the 
cemetery ! 
Just imagine if the teeming millions of India had 
used cemeteries during all the centuries of their exist- 
ence, and had carried the same prejudices of caste 
into them as they display in most other affairs, what 
a country it would have been ! Merely one huge cem- 
etery! Worse by far than China. But the Hindoo is 
mysteriously remarkable, and although caste bound 
to a degree, yet in his village life and death the most 
democratic being on earth. 
I have been tempted to write you this imperfect ac- 
count of the progress of cremation mainly because 
that method of disposing of the dead offers the very 
best solution of tbe matter you have so much at heart 
— viz., the beautification of the last resting place. 
James MacPherson. 
One of Nature’s Paths, 
Fairmovint ParK. 
The little glimpse of nature which this photograph 
displays will strike all those familiar with woods as 
being very life like. Many a some- 
what similar scene it has been my 
fortune to see, some, in fact, so 
nearly alike that a picture of one 
would almost represent another. 
The pretty scene before us is a 
real natural path, excepting a little 
leveling of the ground here and 
there which has been done. The 
leaning tree which in summer em- 
bowers the path, the winding way 
further on between the trees, are 
all as nature placed them. The 
tree whose leaning trunk gives 
such a character to the scene is the 
Catalpa bignonioides. What first 
caused it to take such growth is 
uncertain, but its development in 
that direction commenced evident- 
ly many, many years ago. It is 
not uncommon to find others of 
this tree of peculiar shape ; some 
I have seen are branched nicely for 
the placing of seats in the branches. 
The large, upright looking trunk to be seen at the 
base of the catalpa is the black oak, Quercus tinctoria. 
Of the three trees through which the path winds, that 
on the left is the tulip poplar, Liriodendron ; of the 
two on the right, one is an oak, the other the sour 
gum, Nyssa multiflora, and above them, on the hill- 
side, is the beech, Fagus Americana. 
It would surprise many to be told this scene is in 
Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, and close to the built- 
up city, near what is known as Strawberry Mansion. 
It does not take much departure from the beaten path 
to bring one into the thick of the woods, where, in 
the solitude and stillness one can feel as did the author 
A PATH OF NATURE, FAIRMOUNT PARK. 
of these lines ; 
“Oh ! that the desert were my dwelling place. 
With one fair spirit for my minister, 
That I might all forget the human race. 
And, hating no one, love but only her!” 
Should the path be followed to its ending, it takes 
one to the River Drive, along the Schuylkill, where 
one can continue along to old Fairmount Park, or 
cross the river by one of the bridges to the portion 
of the Park west of the river. 
Joseph Meehan. 
