H ouse and Garden 
at the end of this will he simply “a view”—a moun¬ 
tain, a hillside, or the sea. For the country is rich 
in scenery, and the Californians are proud ot it'and 
love it. In one garden that I visited the accents of 
such a formal avenue were, at the one end, a clump 
of live oak; and at the other, of eucalyptus. That 
also may be a suggestion. For the rest, there can 
be no doubt that brilliant flowers will play a part, 
and the parterre come, perhaps, into a new and 
greater glory. But beyond this one may not go in 
safe prediction, though one may wish he had the 
chance to take a trial at the true California garden. 
THE FIRST COUNTY PARK SYSTEM IN AMERICA—II 
By Frederick W. Kelsey'=’ 
{^Continued from the 'June Id umber of House and Garden) 
T he provisions of this law, providing for a tem¬ 
porary commission, call for no extended ref¬ 
erence here. In brief, the presiding justice of the 
Supreme Court was authorized to appoint a com¬ 
mission of five persons for the term of two years, to 
“consider the advisability of laying out ample open 
spaces for the use of the public******in such 
county,” with “authority to make maps and plans of 
such spaces and to collect such other information 
in relation thereto as the said board may deem expe¬ 
dient;” and “as soon as conveniently may be,” to 
“make a report in writing of a comprehensive plan 
for laying out and acquiring such open spaces.” 
The commission was also authorized to em¬ 
ploy assistants, and to be reimbursed for actual 
traveling expenses incurred “in the discharge of 
their duties.” The total expenditures were limi¬ 
ted to $10,000, the payment to he provided for 
by the Board of Freeholders (which is the official 
title of the county governing bodies in New Jersey) 
in the usual manner. 
The attitude of the public at the time of the 
approval of the bill had continued to grow more 
and more favorable. The suggestion that those 
identified with the enterprise had merely adapted 
the scheme of the metropolitan park system of 
Massachusetts, entirely overlooked the fact that 
it was merely the preliminary stages of that under¬ 
taking—the initial legislation for the first com¬ 
mission—which had been, in a general way, fol¬ 
lowed. The Orange committee had in the early 
part of that year, 1894, gone quite fully into the 
various phases of many of the larger park sys¬ 
tems. It was found that the Metropolitan Park 
plan, embracing, as it at that time did, thirty-nine 
separate municipalities, and various counties about 
Boston, and having an entirely new and untried 
system of financing was wholly unsuited to the 
needs of Essex County. Indeed, we had all along 
understood that, under the New Jersey Constitu- 
^Courtesy of the J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Co., 57 Rose St., New York. 
tion, such a district as had been mapped out and 
included in the Metropolitan Parks area could not 
be legally laid out or established here; and that 
this State would not be likely, even if it could, to 
advance its credit to the various municipalities 
of millions of dollars, as had been done in Massa¬ 
chusetts, relying as there, upon a future appor¬ 
tionment or assessment upon the cities and towns 
within the district for final reimbursements. 
It was, therefore, recognized at the outset of 
the discussion that only the general form of the 
preliminary legislation in Massachusetts could be 
in any way advantageously used here. It had also 
been recognized that the movement for larger parks 
or park systems had taken different forms in 
nearly every city. New York had in 1888 ex¬ 
pended millions of dollars in adding nearly 4,000 
acres of new park lands, extending, with the great 
connecting parkways, from Van Cortland Park 
on the Hudson, to the beautiful Pelham Bay Park 
on Long Island Sound—all embraced in what was 
soon afterwards known as the park system of the 
Bronx. 
In and about London the County Councils had 
at that time located and acquired, as had the 
authorities of Paris, vast tracts of lands for park 
uses, but each was then lacking, as in most other 
European and American urban communities, in 
any concerted action or comprehensive connective 
park system such as, I believe, was first adopted 
in this country in Detroit, and as was now deemed 
desirable for Essex County. 
It was accordingly understood that the favorable 
legislation that had just then been so promptly 
obtained in our own Legislature, would not only 
enable the work of acquiring and developing a 
park system here to go readily and rapidly for¬ 
ward, but under the law, a commission, “selected 
for fitness,” would be enabled to adopt the best 
features of all the park systems, and by holding the 
enterprise on the lines so cordially approved by 
44 
