city, . . . and he shall have power to plant trees and to construct, erect, and establish seats, drinking fountains, statues, and works of art, when he may deem it tasteful or appropriate so to do." At the head of this service is "a landscape architect, skilled and expert, whose assent shall be requisite to all plans and works or changes thereof respecting the conformation, development, or ornamentation of any of the parks, squares, or public places of the city, to the end that the same may be uniform and symmetrical at all times."
The conclusion seems inevitable that public policy requires that, in the interests of the health of the people and the comfort and well-being of that large class of the poor who can not escape the summer heat by leaving the city, the jurisdiction of the Park Department should be extended to all trees, shrubs, plants, and vines now and hereafter planted and growing in the streets of New York, and that said department should be required to plant such additional trees, shrubs, etc., as it may from time to time deem necessary and expedient for the purpose of carrying out the intent and purpose of such act which should be declared to be to improve the public health, to render the city comfortable to its summer residents, and for ornamentation.
"He who plants a tree, he plants love;
Tents of coolness, spreading out above
Wayfarers, he may not live to see.
{{float-center|Gifts that grow are best,
Hands that bless are blest.
Plant. Life does the rest."
| MIVART'S GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE.[1] |
By Prof. WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS.
IF books like this by Professor Mivart, who holds that "the groundwork of science must be sought in the human mind," help to teach that the greatest service of science to mankind is not "practical," but intellectual, they are worthy the consideration of the thoughtful, even if this consideration should lead some of the thoughtful to distrust Mivart's groundwork, or to doubt whether it is firm enough for any superstructure.
Many, no doubt, think the desire to know a sufficient groundwork for science, believing that they wish to know in order that they may rightly order their lives; but the school to which Mivart belongs
- ↑ The Groundwork of Science. A Study of Epistemology. By St. George Mivart, M. D., Ph. D., F. R. S. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1898.
