497 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
(From the Cemetery Reports, Continued.) 
The Swedish Cemetery Corporation of Worcester, Mass., 
at its last annual meeting reported expenditures of $2,308, 
with a balance of $1,385 in the treasury January i, and a 
reserve fund of $1,781. There were 169 interments during 
the year, and considerable improvement work accomplished. 
At the annual meeting of the Cemetery Board of Hamil- 
ton, Ont., Superintendent Pray presented his report. It 
showed that the receipts for the year were $10,111, the larg- 
est in the history of the cemetery. The expenditures for the 
year amounted to $9,876. The perpetual care fund was in- 
creased by $2,708. The superintendent recommended that the 
price of lots be raised, and that additional ground be pur- 
chased for cemetery purposes. Many needed improvements 
were made during the year. 
The report of the cemetery board of New Bedford, Mass., 
shows that three large sections in Rural Cemetery have been 
laid out and improved on the lawn plan, and in Oak Grove 
the same plan has been followed in developing a recent addi- 
tion. The following statistics of the different cemeteries for 
the past year are given : Cost of maintenance : Rural, $12,- 
277.69; Oak Grove, $ 7 , 959 - 57 ; Pine Grove, $773.72; Griffin 
Street, $62.33. Interments for 1902 : Rural, 328 ; Oak Grove, 
228; Pine Grove, 16; Friends, 8. Total interments: Rural, 
10,749 ; Oak Grove, 10,928 ; Pine Grove, 488. 
The seventy-first annual report of the Mount Auburn Ceme- 
tery Corporation, Boston, Mass., shows a successful financial 
year. The repair fund now amounts to $1,224,404.70, an 
increase during the year of $56,887.40. The permanent fund 
was increased during the year $13,876.13, and now amounts 
to $445,841.63. The general fund is now $175,343.61. There 
were 438 interments during the year, making a total of 34,316. 
The treasurer’s report shows $38,300.66 on hand the first of 
the year, receipts during the year, $102,688.63 ; total, $140,- 
989.29. Expenditures, $34,930.99; balance on hand, $38,376.59; 
total, $140,989.29. The number of cremations during the year 
was 134 as against 119 the year before. This makes the total 
number of incinerations 303. 
The annual report of Superintendent A. D. Smith, of Moun- 
tain View Cemetery, Oakland, Cal., shows that much work 
has been accomplished in beautifying the grounds. A new 
soldier’s plat, with space for five hundred graves, was dedi- 
cated last Memorial Day and a Washingtonia gigantea planted 
on it in honor of President McKinley; 1,200 feet of ground 
along the main avenue has been graded and prepared for 
planting with shrubbery, trees and flowering plants, arranged 
for foliage and color effect. The perpetual care fund is grow- 
ing rapidly, and on January i amounted to $161,745.20. No 
lots are now sold without provision for such care, and many 
lots, formerly neglected, are being brought under care by 
force of example. The board some years ago created a “per- 
petual guaranty fund,” for which ten per cent from the sale 
of ground each month is set aside. This fund now amounts 
to $34,730.83. The superintendent reports that the hay crop 
last year was greatly injured by the squirrels, but says that 
they have been exterminated by use of carbon bi-sulphide 
and strychnine. The weed killing mixture of arsenic and 
caustic soda recommended by the Association of American 
Cemetery Superintendents has proven a success and is recom- 
mended as more economical than the old method of hoeing. 
The cemetery owns its own quarries which furnish material 
for retaining walls, foundations and other masonry work, 
road construction and top dressing for the drives. The total 
number of interments is now 22,140, and the trust fund 
amounts to $196,476.03. 
CEMETERY A PUBLIC CORPORATION, 
The supreme court of Kansas holds (Davis v. Coventry, 70 
Pacific Reporter, 583) that an association organized and in- 
corporated for the purpose of purchasing and holding lands, 
surveying, platting, and selling lots therein for sepulture, and 
otherwise maintaining a cemetery, is a public and not a 
private corporation. Public cemeteries are not authorized to 
issue and sell stock. The owners of the lots are members of 
the corporation, and are entitled to vote in the election of its 
officers and upon all other matters to the same extent as 
stockholders in other corporations. It says, after citing some 
of the provisions of the Kansas statutes, that it was intended 
that, instead of the corporation being controlled by stock- 
holders, it should be controlled by the lot owners. There 
seems to be much reason for this, outside the statutory pro- 
visions. A stockholder, if there could be one, need not own 
a lot, or have a relative interred therein. The only incentive 
he would have in maintaining the ground would be to induce 
persons to purchase lots, and when the lots were disposed 
of his interest would cease, while a lot owner has a continu- 
ing and increasing interest in the property of the cemetery, 
in its decoration and improvement, and making it a place 
where his dead are to be buried, and where he expects to 
finally rest. It is his constant desire to have such place orna- 
mented, and the entire ground well preserved and made in- 
viting as a place of interment, as well as a place to which his 
friends may resort. If the lot owners may not participate 
in the election of its officers and the management of the 
affairs of the corporation, and it is purely a private corpora- 
tion, owned and managed by stockholders for profit, the idea 
of perpetuity at once vanishes. Moreover, the court con- 
siders a reason for holding the corporation a public one is 
that property so platted and held is exempt from taxation ; 
another is in the limitation placed upon its disposition. 
* * ❖ 
THE LOCATION OF A NEW CEMETERY, 
On appeal to the state board of health to reverse the de- 
termination of a municipal council and a local board of health 
respecting the location of a new cemetery, the state board, 
although acting judicially, the supreme court of New Jersey 
holds (State [Dodd and others. Prosecutors] vs. Francisco, 
53 Atlantic Reporter, 219), is not required to examine wit- 
nesses under oath on matters in controversy before it. On 
such an appeal the state board may consider a report made 
by one of its committees on a previous hearing in regard to 
the same matter. On such an appeal the board is not confined 
to the consideration of sanitary questions. The determination 
of the board on such an appeal is presumed to rest upon’ 
proper grounds, and that presumption can be overcome only 
by the certificate of the board to the contrary, or by clear 
proof to the contrary in case a rule or order to obtain the 
board’s certificate prove ineffectual. The court says that the 
matters to be considered by the board respecting the pro- 
priety of locating a new cemetery are of so general and public 
a nature that they can be decided more intelligently by ob- 
servation and discussion than by testimony. In this respect 
the board resembles boards of assessment, whose proceed- 
ings involve the exercise of judicial functions, but whose 
judgment is to be founded on facts obvious to their sensi,s, 
or ascertained by inquiry and examination; who, although 
not authorized to call witnesses and examine them upon 
oath, should, as do surveyors and freeholders in road cases, 
visit the premises in controversy, and avail themselves of 
every accessible means of information. 
