239 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
INDIAN BASKET GRASS, MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK 
day, but it is a spot where the visitor may 
well spend weeks. 
The Nisqually Glacier is the best known 
though by no means the largest of the gla- 
ciers. It is five miles long and at Paradise 
Valley is half a mile wide. Glistening 
white and fairly smooth at its shining 
source on the mountain’s summit, its sur- 
face here is soiled with dust and broken 
stone and squeezed and rent by terrible 
pressure into fantastic shapes. Innumer- 
able crevasses or cracks many feet deep 
break across it, caused by the more rapid 
movement of the glacier’s middle than its 
edges; for glaciers, again like rivers of 
water, develop swifter currents nearer mid- 
stream. 
Professor Le Conte tells us that the 
movement of Nisqually Glacier in summer 
averages, at mid-stream, about sixteen 
inches a day. It is far less at the mar- 
gins, its speed being retarded by the fric- 
tion of the sides. 
It is one of the great pleasures of a 
visit to Mount Rainier National Park to 
wander over its fields of snow and climb 
out on the Nisqually Glacier and explore 
its crevasses and ice caves. 
Like all glaciers, the Nisqually gathers 
on its surface masses of rock with which 
it strews its sides just as rivers of waters 
strew their banks with logs and floating 
debris. These are called lats^ moraines, 
or side moraines. Sometimes glaciers build 
lateral moraines miles long and over a 
thousand feet high, as you will see when 
you visit the Rocky Mountain National 
Park. 
The rocks which are carried in mid- 
stream to the end of the glacier and 
dropped when the ice melts are called the 
medial or middle moraine. 
The end, or snout, of the glacier thus 
always lies among a great mass of rocks 
and stones. The Nisqually River flows 
from a cave in the end of the Nisqually 
Glacier’s snout, for the melting begins 
miles upstream under the glacier. The 
river is milky white when it first appears 
because it carries sediment and powdered 
rock, which, however, it deposits in time, 
becoming quite clear. 
There are many glaciers as large and 
larger than the Nisqually, but they are lit- 
tle known because so hard to reach. The 
Department of the Interior has now com- 
pleted trails around the great ice moun- 
tain and all of these glaciers are now ac- 
cessible. 
Many interesting things might be told of 
these glaciers were there space. For ex- 
ample, several species of minute insects live 
in the ice, hopping about like tiny fleas. 
They are harder to see than the so-called 
sand fleas at the seashore because much 
smaller. Slender, dark-brown worms live 
in countless millions in the surface ice. 
Microscopic rose-colored plants also thrive 
in such great numbers that they tint the 
surface here and there, making what is 
commonly called “red snow.” 
But this brief picture of the Mount Rai- 
nier National Park would miss its loveliest 
touch without some notice of the wild- 
flower parks lying at the base, and often 
reaching far up between the icy fingers of 
Mount Rainier. Paradise Valley, Henrys 
Hunting Ground, Spray Park, Summer- 
land — such are the names given to some of 
these beauty spots. 
Let John Muir, the celebrated naturalist, 
describe them here. 
“Above the forests,” he writes, “there is 
a zone of the loveliest flowers, fifty miles 
in circuit and nearly two miles wide, so 
closely planted and luxurious that it seems 
as if nature, glad to make an open space 
between woods so dense and ice so deep, 
were economizing the precious ground and 
trying to see how many of her darlings she 
can get together in one mountain wreath — 
daisies, anemones, columbine, erythroniums, 
larkspurs, etc., among which we wade knee- 
deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in 
myriads touching petal to petal. Alto- 
gether, this is the richest subalpine gar- 
den I have ever found, a perfect flower 
elysium.” 
COMMERCIALISM IN THE CEMETERY BUSINESS 
It is supposed to be extremely poor 
taste to start any address with an apology, 
but in spite of this I will be compelled to 
explain that when I promised our Presi- 
dent to write a paper if there were not 
sufficient, I made the promise with the 
expectation that I would not have to per- 
form the task. In consequence of this it 
^ was August 10th before I was able to 
M give the matter any thought as far as get- 
» ting it into concrete form. 
A It is not my intention in this paper to 
Address before the Norfolk Convention of 
the A. A. C. S. by Bellett Lawson, Jr. 
try and solve the often discussed question 
as to whether cemeteries should be con- 
ducted for profit or not because we have 
very successful cemeteries in this country 
that are conducted both for profit and 
otherwise. However, in using the term 
commercialism, I am considering some of 
the evils that have cropped up, especially 
in the last ten years. This applies more 
to our large cities than the smaller places. 
I presume that is because there is more 
fish to be caught in the larger centers. 
The commercial side of cemeteries has 
produced many evils, and as all evils must 
have a root, I will begin there. 
The root is the unprincipled promoter. 
To this class of human beings it makes no 
difference to him whether there is any need 
for a new cemetery or whether the capital 
is in keeping with the actual investment. 
All he wants is to make money on the 
stock-selling proposition. He does not care 
whether reasonable dividends can be pai(f 
later. All he wants is a large part of 
