OUR PARKS 
 
 TO BE OR NOT TO BE. 
 
 Papers read before the New York Academy of Sciences, April 30, 1877 
 and February 1, 1878. 
 
 By EDWARD SEGUIN, M.D. 
 
 THIRD EDTTTOX. 
 
 Printed for the Public Parks Protective Association. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 BRENT ANO'S LITERARY EMPORIUM. 
 39 Union Square. 
 1878. 
 
iEx IGihrta 
 
 SEYMOUR DURST 
 
 'When you leave, please leave this hook 
 
 Because it has heen said 
 "Sver'thing comes t' him who waits 
 
 Except a loaned hook." 
 
 Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library 
 Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library 
 
OUR PARKS 
 
 TO BE OR NOT TO BE. 
 
 Papers head before the New York Academy of Sciences, April 30, 1877, 
 and February 1, 1878. 
 
 By EDWARD SEGUIN, M.D. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 Printed for the Public Parks Protective Association. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 [ BRENT ANO'S LITERARY EMPORIUM. 
 39 Union Squake. 
 1878. 
 
 • 
 
AA 
 
OUR PARKS. 
 
 " I want our parks preserved as playgrounds and improved as garden-schools, 
 for my grandsons Edward and John." — E. S. 
 
 To save our parks will save hundreds of children and improve 
 thousands. To not improve these parks is to abandon them to 
 the beast of prey which is devouring American civilization. To 
 claim these parks for any other purposes than recreation, in- 
 struction, and hygiene, is the reverse of the progressive move- 
 ment of our age. 
 
 The New York city parks have been either acquired by con- 
 tract with the people's money, for the recreation of said people 
 and the education of their children, like the Central Park; or 
 given for the same purposes by deeds of benevolent citizens, like 
 most of the Washington Square grounds ; and tradition has 
 consecrated the others to the same usage by a right which is 
 respected in all civilized countries — the right of Prescription. 
 To try to nullify these three forms of right of a hard-worked 
 
 and crowded population to pure air is audacity ; and 
 
 something besides. 
 
 But the recently unveiled plan of seizing one of our parks, 
 then another, and all in succession, for the lounging and parad- 
 ing of militiamen, is anachronism. All nations now send their 
 militia to the field of manoeuvre every year, and excuse them 
 from the painful duty of frightening the servant-girls and their 
 babies in the squares — a drill sufficient to dress the bloody gen- 
 darmes of Paris, or operatic soldiers, but insufficient to initiate 
 young men in modern warfare. 
 
 A year ago, none knew precisely what was in the air around 
 our parks ; but it smelt worse than gunpowder. In large societies, 
 as in deep seas, there are at different depths contrary currents. 
 When the one just described was silently running towards the 
 
4 
 
 destruction of our breathing-places, another movement was be- 
 ginning for their improvement. 
 
 Historically and philosophically convinced that the Institu- 
 tions which are not actively improved passively deteriorate till 
 they become the prey of the wily, and considering the relations 
 of parks and gardens to public health and education, I thought 
 of improving the parks by giving in them more room to hygien, 
 and by developing their capacity for education. In this view I 
 prepared for the New York Academy of Sciences the following 
 paper, which was read the 30th of April, 1877. 
 
 HYGIENIC AND SCIENTIFIC USE OF PUBLIC 
 
 GROUNDS. 
 
 § I. Historical Garden-schools. 
 
 The parks and public grounds of a city like New York are 
 too much considered as playthings to amuse the people with, or 
 at best as healthful resorts for a ride or walk. If they are really 
 the Commons they used to be, and as they are yet often called, 
 their ideal destination must be the common weal, in which enters 
 largely the weal of the swarming young folks. 
 
 Truly, ideals vary according to the power of accommodation 
 of the human mind to ideas ; so the human ideal has varied a good 
 deal from time to time in regard to the appointment and destina- 
 tion of public grounds. But there are signs that public opinion 
 is about to enlarge its view of them, since the legislature at 
 Albany has under consideration a plan for the appropriation of 
 one of our new parks for educational purposes. 
 
 It is therefore quite opportune to reassert the natural prin- 
 ciples which have presided over the management of historic 
 public grounds, and to trace an outline of the possible applica- 
 tion of these principles to the management of our own parks, 
 with due regard to the difference of aim in different societies. 
 
 The first garden-schools surrounded the temples and hospitals. 
 When the school became independent, it carried the garden- 
 teaching in its protestantism against the demoded (out of fashion) 
 gods. Alexander gave his old teacher, Aristotle, one of these 
 
5 
 
 garden -schools, the Nymphseum, full of rare plants and animals, 
 where he could both study and teach. 
 
 Tired of warring, his successors, Eumenes, Attains, Ptolemgeus 
 Soter, transferred their rivalry from the battle-field to their 
 garden-schools, where the fruits of Asia were acclimatized, and 
 where vegetable and animal anatomy and physiology attained, at 
 once, their antique excellence. 
 
 Under Theophrastus, Zopyrus, Erasistratus, Nicander, the 
 school-gardens of Athens, Pergamos, Alexandria, attracted thou- 
 sands of students of nature. Kings felt honored by being their 
 disciples, and toxicology became almost a royal corner in sci- 
 ence. In it Mithridates acquired a fame by his experiments on 
 conium, opium, hyoscyamus, and their antidotes, and Cleopatra 
 by h'ers on animal poisons, under the tutorship of Cleophantus. 
 
 Later and westward, Theodoric in Lombardy, and Charle- 
 magne in his whole empire, took personal pains to organize gar- 
 den-schools among the other barriers they meant to oppose to the . 
 incoming long hibernation of the human mind. But all in 
 vain. The subsequent awakening took place in the model-gar- 
 dens planned and grown by Alfonso d'Est and Como di Medi- 
 ci, where was prepared a new bji'th of mankind, forcibly called 
 Kenaissance. Next, Henry de Navarre laid out the Jardins de 
 Montpellier, which became the hot-bed of an illustrious line 
 of naturalists and physicians. Soon Buffon, Daubenton, Cuvier, 
 de Jussieu. Lamarck (the intellectual father of Charles Darwin, 
 by the by), worked with their brains and hands to the creation 
 and successive reorganizations of the Jardiu des Plantes. And 
 to. close, without completing this commanding enumeration of 
 the garden-schools, and of their creators, the last French Empire 
 almost counterbalanced its turpitudes by the creation of the Jar- 
 dins d'Acclimatation of Paris, Nice, and Algiers. 
 
 These incomplete reminiscences are intended to gain your ap- 
 proval, and to win your support, for the application to our public 
 grounds and parks of plans akin to — but not like — those whose 
 realization has made famous the garden-schools of Pisa, Flor- 
 ence, Yenice, Padua, Chelsea, Oxford, Edinburgh, Breslau, Ley- 
 den, Brussels, Geneva, the Luxembourg, Kew, and Sydenham. 
 To be brief, I will restrict my suggestions concerning this 
 
6 
 
 vast subject to two somewhat correlated points — the use of public 
 grounds for the acclimatization of foreign trees and plants bene- 
 ficial to public hygiene, and for the better instruction of youth 
 in Rebus Natures — a more comprehensive expression, I think, 
 than our Natural History. 
 
 But a previous question : Who can create our garden-schools 
 . . . ? Architects like Yitruvius or Lenotre may build them, 
 naturalists like de Candole alone can plant them. But even 
 naturalists must be charged to allow no room for bricks, as little 
 as possible for gravel, aud as much as possible for vegetation. 
 For, if it is a sin to hasten the barrenness of the earth, which 
 will eventually liken it to a dead moon, how greater is the of- 
 fence of purposely extending the parchedness to the very grounds 
 consecrated to the perpetuity of this world's life by vegetation % 
 
 Second only to this duty of keeping the earth green, so that 
 it will not lose its moist atmosphere and shall not perish by our 
 fault, come the more immediate and lesser objects I have men- 
 tioned : 
 
 § II. Cultivation of Febrifugal Trees. 
 
 We advocate the planting on all available grounds — mainly 
 on those which belong to the commonwealth — of trees which 
 will improve the general health of the surrounding population, 
 and particularly of those trees which can neutralize the fer- 
 ments of our prevalent diseases. 
 
 In this respect nobody ignores what the city of New York 
 suffers from zymotic and malarious poisoning in its low wards, 
 kept dilapidated, and in its upper ones, left marshy, in order to 
 exact bleeding; rents for the habitable houses in the middle of 
 the city. > 
 
 In this strait, few among us are aroused to the* necessity and 
 possibility of successfully opposing the healthy balsams of vege- 
 tation to these deleterious emanations and machinations. Yet it 
 is no more news that the Eucalyptus globulus of Australia has 
 been found to possess, by its simple presence in a region, the 
 most marked febrifugarpower. 
 
 Does this tree owe its property, to make lands salubrious which 
 would otherwise remain malarious, to its capacity of absorbing 
 
7 
 
 enormous quantities of marshy water and noxious vapors ; or to 
 the camphoraceous odor it emits ; or (as I think) to the capacity 
 of the resinous down for catching the fever-sporules after the 
 manner of the insect-eating plants, and not unlike other febri- 
 fuges, the cedar, the willow, the hemp, the sun-flower, all char- 
 acterized by a sticky down or resin. 
 
 Such are the main empirical facts to which is due the culti- 
 vation of the eucalyptus in Europe, Northern Africa, some 
 malarial districts of British India ; in our hemisphere, in Cali- 
 fornia and the Southern States. Even in the Northern States, 
 in Michigan, for instance, legislative provisions are prepared to 
 grow it by the scientific process of acclimatization. New York, 
 no less interested in the suppression of the fever-poison, will not 
 remain contented with listening to the results of others' experi- 
 ence, of which a few : 
 
 Dr. Benjamin M. Cromwell, in a report to the State Board 
 of Health of Georgia, says of several of these trees now grow- 
 ing in Albany, Ga. : "At night, when the air is calm, the eu- 
 calyptus emits the characteristic odor so much commented upon 
 by those who have described it, and to which it is thought to 
 owe its antiseptic properties. So decided is this odor in passing 
 in the vicinity of these little trees, that the writer can well un- 
 derstand how a forest of them could impregnate the air for miles 
 with their pleasant odor, and that the stories told by travellers 
 concerning its febrifugal properties are within the bounds of a 
 reasonable probability.'' 
 
 The London Medical Times gives some remarkable instances 
 of the power of the eucalypti to improve the health of mias- 
 matic localities : 
 
 " At Paddock, twenty miles from Algiers, a farm situated on 
 the banks of the Hamize was noted for its extremely pestilential 
 air. In the spring of 1867, about 13,000 eucalypti were planted 
 there. In July of the same year, the time when the fever season 
 was to set in, not a single case occurred ; yet the trees were not 
 more than nine feet high. Since then complete immunity from 
 fever has been maintained." 
 
 In a report to the French Academy of Sciences, Mr. Gim- 
 bert says : " In the neighborhood of Constantine, the farm of 
 
8 
 
 Ben. Machidlyn was in bad repute ; it was covered with marshes 
 both in winter and summer; in five years the whole ground was 
 dried up by 14,000 of these trees, and farmers and children en- 
 joy excellent health." 
 
 I could multiply the quotations, but these must suffice to show 
 the utility of planting the eucalyptus in our city, where the 
 fever, far from receding, extends its ravages. 
 
 But to plant is one thing, and to ripen is another, as shown in 
 the report of the Secretary of the Board of Health of the State 
 of Michigan, Dr. H. B. Baker, which report shows the eucalyp- 
 tus growing at once in California and Georgia, puny when set 
 without previous nursing in Northern Italy, and thriving in 
 France after undergoing the process of acclimatization. 
 
 This makes our way clear ; we must first plant the eucalyptus 
 in our parks as in a nursery of acclimatization, in order to be 
 able to transplant it later where it will do the most good. 
 
 But, supposing that the eucalyptus could not develop its 
 virtues in our climate ; let us foster by its side the home trees 
 whose febrifugal properties are known, but have not yet been 
 scientifically tested, nor developed by cultivation, namely, the 
 Populus balsamifera (the so-called Balsam of Gilead), several 
 other American poplars, willows, cedars, pines, terebinths like 
 the Abies balsamea, various juglans, like the walnut-trees, etc. 
 Besides their hygienic properties, these trees need no expen- 
 sive acclimatization, offer the largest range of colors and forms 
 for landscape gardening, and may replace with advantage the 
 hackneyed trees and shrubs which seem to be chosen to adorn 
 our squares because they have neither blossom, color, balsam, 
 scent, or fruit. 
 
 § III. Organization of our Garden-schools. 
 The second use to be made of our public grounds would be to 
 set apart portions of their land and water, as so many pages, to 
 illustrate Natural History to our 200,000 pupils of all ages and 
 grades. Two correlated facts render imminent the adoption of 
 this plan : 1st, the insufficiency and unhealthiness of the city 
 school-buildings, and 2d, the unnaturalness of the matters 
 taught. 
 
9 
 
 This double-headed criticism does not mean that the enemies 
 of our public schools have better accommodations and superior 
 methods of teaching, but that the best school of the present is 
 yet the school of the past, inadequate in size and grasp to the 
 wants of the nearest future. 
 
 But, cutting short this branching of our question where it 
 invites the more to a philosophical excursion, let us adhere 
 closely to our second proposition, which consists in demanding 
 that parts of the public grounds of this city be reserved for the 
 natural expansion of our system of popular education. 
 
 We should propose to proceed in this work slowly — as it be- 
 hooves an undertaking which it will take long to perfect — yet to 
 begin at once, upon a unity of plan whose immense details can 
 be indicated, but not summarized here. 
 
 In this plan, 1st, each of our small squares would be adorned 
 with special kinds of plants, succeeding each other as the season 
 advances ; and all these squares, would present, in their ensem- 
 ble, not far from the schools, a tolerably complete cycle of clas- 
 sified floral botany. The Washington Square is particularly 
 fitted, by its size and proximity to thirty schools and many fac- 
 tories, for that kind of natural and hygienic teaching. 
 
 2d. Every one of our parks ought to contribute large tracts of 
 land and water for the study of (a) the comparative vegetation of 
 the north, south,, and west of this country ; (b) the comparison, 
 by strongly marked specimens, of the vegetables of the different 
 parts of the world; (c) the juxtaposition of the trees, plants, 
 and vines which furnish food, drink, and raiment to man ; 
 (d) the classification on the grounds of vegetable medicines and 
 poisons, according to their properties ; (e) according to their 
 origin, and to the circumstances of their discovery or importa- 
 tion ; {f ) the growing of flowers, plants, and trees, in view of 
 their picturesque apposition in field or house decoration ; (g) and 
 to almost constantly supply model leaves, blossoms, tendrils, 
 twigs to the young aspirants towards the industrial arts who are 
 opening a new era of prosperity for this country. 
 
 3d. For the organization of these open-air class-rooms, it would 
 become necessary to enter into special arrangements with the city 
 and suburban railroads to obtain a nominal fare for the transfer 
 
10 
 
 of the students to and from the parks during the non-business 
 hours of the day. And more, to restore in our schools the Greek 
 gymnasiarch, or Roman archiatre, whose functions, new in one 
 sense, old in others, would be better expressed by the name of 
 Keeper of the vital forces, or chief of the movement of the train- 
 ing, in contradistinction to the present superintendent of the 
 studies, who is physiologically the chief keeper of immobility in 
 the school. 
 
 This idea — developed in my report, to the U. S. Secretary of 
 State, the Hon. Hamilton Fish, on Education at the Vienna 
 Universal Exhibition of 1873 — is here but apparently digressive, 
 since it introduces us deeper into our subject, which is to find the 
 means of restituting the city grounds to their historic and sci- 
 entific destination, and to keep our children in affectionate 
 intercourse with nature. 
 
 But, to act the beneficent part of nature in education, our 
 parks must be made (a) the books to which every season brings 
 new leaves full of ideas and illustrations ; (b). the text and com- 
 mentary of the development and solidarity of all the vital forces ; 
 (c) and the exponent of the concordance of the special laws of 
 fecundation, gemmation, crystallization, vegetable dynamics and 
 mechanics, electricity, etc., with the, highest generalizations of 
 order in the universe. 
 
 One can foresee that these garden-schools will be but the be- 
 ginning of the enlargement of our national system of education, 
 and that a large part of the schooling will have to be carried, from' 
 its present narrow abodes to the museums of art, from our infec- 
 tious brick schools to the garden-schools, and to the scientific and 
 industrial collections, where, under myriads of shapes, ideas are 
 prisoned in matter, expecting to be taken from their Hades by 
 young brains ready to bring these captives to a new and higher 
 life. 
 
 In a word, our public gardens, becoming public schools, must 
 be made subservient accessories to our system of national educa- 
 tion ; and the physician charged with the management of the 
 vital functions of the wards of the State during their training 
 will be, in reality, the Keeper of the vital and productive forces 
 of the nation. 
 
11 
 
 Extract feom the Minutes of the Board of Education. 
 
 From the Committee of the New York Academy of Sciences, 
 as follows : 
 
 The undersigned, a committee of the New York Academy of 
 Sciences, appointed at the instance of Dr. Seguin, to suggest 
 methods by which the public parks of New York could be made 
 most useful to the citizens, respectfully submit the following 
 resolutions : 
 
 Resolved, 1. That the public parks of New York, like those 
 of every other great city, are of inestimable value to the physical 
 and moral health of the citizens, and should be carefully guarded 
 from every kind of encroachment and misuse. 
 
 2. That the parks of New York should not only be made at- 
 tractive places of resort, but should be so arranged and planted 
 as to be schools of taste and means of scientific instruction. To 
 accomplish these ends they should not only be made beautiful to 
 to the eye, but so stocked with plants and animals, as to give those 
 who visit them impressive views of the variety and the system of 
 nature. Hence, they should contain, not merely masses of com- 
 mon plants, serving the purpose of so much vegetation in the- 
 landscape, but that vegetation should include as large a number 
 as possible of plants of scientific or economic interest, and those 
 so arranged and labelled as to educate the understanding as well 
 as please the eye. 
 
 3. That since it is a well established truth that certain kinds 
 of vegetation exert a powerful purifying influence upon the 
 atmosphere, efforts should be made to introduce these sanitary 
 agents for the purpose of neutralizing the malaria which per- 
 vades so much of the city and environs of New York ; and that 
 to accomplish this object, we should seek to acclimatize such 
 febrifuge trees as the Eucalyptus, not now hardy here, or to in- 
 troduce plants of this tree taken from some higher and colder 
 station than those from which they have heretofore come. 
 
 4. That special arrangements should be made to facilitate the 
 free use of our parks as garden-schools by the children now too 
 much confined in our public, school buildings ; and that some 
 competent physiological and hygienic control should be estab- 
 lished to guard against the evils which the weaker pupils con- 
 
12 
 
 stantly suffer from too great crowding, and too long confinement 
 in the school-room. 
 
 5. That the members of the Academy of Sciences have heard 
 with great pleasure of the inception of a movement for the 
 establishment of a Botanical Garden in connection with the 
 Central Park, believing that this would add much both to the 
 attractiveness and utility of this great place of resort. 
 
 6. That copies of the foregoing resolutions be transmitted to 
 the Mavor of the City, the Park Commissioners, the Board of 
 Health, the Board of Education, and the Trustees of the Botani- 
 cal Garden, with the assurance that the members of the Academy 
 of -Sciences will gladly co-operate in any possible way fur the 
 accomplishment of the object suggested in these resolutioirs. 
 
 Edward Seguin, Bent. X. Martin, 
 
 J. S. Xewberry, E. B. Peaslee, 
 
 Thomas Egleston, Oliver P. Hubbard. 
 New York, June 18, 1877. 
 
 Official Answer. — Executive Department. 
 City Hall. Xew York, July 3, 1877. 
 President Chandler, Board of Health. 
 President M artin, Departmen t of Parks. 
 President \Yood, Board of Education. 
 
 Gentlemen : 
 
 I commend to your kind consideration the bearer, Dr. Edward 
 Seguin. He will explain to you his admirable system of garden- 
 schools, etc., upon which I should like your report when con- 
 venient. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Smith Ely, Mayor. 
 
 This favorable letter of introduction insured its bearer a good 
 reception, but the Heads of the three great Departments seemed 
 to be taken unaware by the question of garden-schools. They 
 wanted more information, particularly the precedents ; and as I 
 was a delegate to the International Medical Congress of Ge- 
 neva for the American Medical Association, for the Association 
 of Physicians for Idiots, etc., I resolved to study the question 
 
13 
 
 wherever I could conveniently, and came back in November last 
 with the documents and antecedents on garden-schools embodied 
 in the following memoir, which I read before the New York 
 Academy of Sciences, the 4th of February, 1878. 
 
 GARDEX-SCHOOLS IN EUROPE AXD 
 AMERICA 
 
 11 The former ideas on public schools are exhausted ; new social and individual 
 wants demand new solutions of the problem of Universal Education, and these 
 solutions rest with the physician and physiologist." (From Intervention of 
 Physicians in Education, a paper in the Transactions of the American Medical 
 Association, 1877, page 357.) 
 
 Ideas, like seeds, will grow, but in many ways, of which two : 
 Not only wholesome ideas do not attain at once their full ex- 
 pansion, but it is hardly desirable they should. For what is 
 an idea which comes out alone in the world . . . ? an Utopia. 
 On the contrary, an idea supported by the surrounding minds 
 grows steadily, and is soon a good fruit-bearer. 
 
 Of this latter kind was soon to be, in my estimation, the idea 
 of garden-schools, with which I entertained you last year (1877). 
 The public said at once: Oh! yes, the kindergarten. But no. 
 The Garden-School is not a kindergarten, not even a botanical 
 or zoological garden, or summer school ; it is itself : an adapta- 
 tion of our gardens, public grounds, museums, and collections to 
 the enlargement and improvement of our school-system. 
 
 Xothing is so easy as to criticise our public school ; criticism 
 comes to it from friends and foes. But, setting aside the inten- 
 tions of both, they agree on one point — that, once sufficient for a 
 limited number of children, it has become inadequate to the 
 health-and-mind wants of the present youthful population. Let 
 us therefore substitute for that commonplace criticism an idea of 
 a reconstructive character. 
 
 Of this character is the idea of garden -schools as you under- 
 stood it at once ; that of the schooling of the masses being made 
 more active, attractive, and practical by its transference to the 
 open air whenever it is possible. 
 
14 
 
 But, clear as this idea is in the abstract for educated minds, 
 the forms which it may and will assume are so varied, and yet 
 so indefinite, that when your Commission presented the plan of 
 garden-schools to the mayor of the city, his Honor wanted to 
 consult the three Heads of the Departments of Public Health, of 
 the Parks, and of Education. And these High Officials, in their 
 turn, approving of the general idea of garden -schools, demanded 
 more information about its practicability, and the particulars of 
 what was nearest to it in Europe. 
 
 These demands classed at once our idea with those which the 
 surrounding minds will support as soon as they are fully compre- 
 hended. To gain for it this sine qua non support, I started to 
 see the public gardens and grounds most akin to our own 
 ideal ; and I came back with more definite forms of open-air 
 teaching, by which the school may be almost unlimitedly enlarged 
 without erecting new buildings. 
 
 Not that I have found in my errand through a part of Europe 
 what I wanted ; but the nearer I came to the latest improve- 
 ments in public gardening, the more I felt the approach of 
 something like a garden-school ; though I must confess, nobody 
 but one who had seen a garden-school with his mind's eyes could 
 have foreseen there its first shape. 
 
 These European gardens are mythological, fashionable, botan- 
 ical, zoological, conservatories of exotics, or acclimatization 
 grounds, often of a mixed character; almost all disposed for 
 walking and riding, and for the varied amusements in which 
 children, and many grown people as well, find ample scope for 
 mirth, activity, versatility, imaging and imagining powers. 
 
 Some of these public grounds, stately in lines and subdued in 
 tones, unfold in their rectangular walks, like the Pincio of Kome, 
 all the known busts of antiquity — copies, to be sure, but correct 
 enough to let the passer-by read on them the marble-proofs of 
 the texts of Tacitus, Plutarch, Appian: that is already garden- 
 school education. 
 
 Other parks, not unlike the Elysian Fields, are peopled with 
 statues which now expect in vain the apparition of gods, heroes, 
 or kings: Calypso bewitching Telemachus ; Perseus saving 
 Andromeda ; and lower, Dubarry-as-Diana making Louis-Endy- 
 
15 
 
 mion believe she wants to escape through the misty spray of 
 Neptune. Such were Marly and Sceaux, such are yet the two 
 Trianons, and parts of Versailles, Dresden, Hampton Court ; and 
 Monceaux, which, famed for lesser divinities, shades under its 
 umbrella-like catalpa leaves happy babies and dreamy adolescents. 
 
 The popular gardens of Milan, Florence, the Tuileries, the 
 Allees of the Luxembourg, the Buttes Chaumont, and the Bois 
 de Boulogne, the Central, Prospect, Fairmount and Lincoln parks, 
 and many others in London, Southampton, Edinburgh, etc., afford 
 more comfort to the busy than instruction to the young folks ; 
 yet I am ready to admit that many images are unconsciously 
 stored there during rambles, which turn up ideas when wanted. 
 
 The botanical gardens are not all alike. Those of Padua, Pisa, 
 Leyden, Breslau, Montpellier, are parts of the vast foundations 
 of the Renaissance which revived science and letters, but they 
 stood too high above the wants of the masses to serve us as models. 
 
 A more popular institution was the Jardin des Plantes, created 
 by Buffon, imitated in many places, which developed among 
 plain people the taste for Natural History and its accessory arts. 
 There, many young naturalists began, as Lamarck, their gratuitous 
 studies ; Barrie and Mene, two poor lads, made themselves great 
 sculptors, partaking of dry-bread breakfasts with their brute 
 models. 
 
 To the appreciation of our psycho-physiological capacity for 
 receiving impressions, like heliotypes on the retina, en passant 
 is likely due the creation of these resorts of the multitude, where 
 the education of, and by the senses, is incessant and forcible. To 
 the English belongs the honor of having perfected those immense 
 glass-palace-gardens, invented by Girardin to exhibit everything 
 pleasant and instructive to everybody. Their Kensington and 
 Sydenham (though in part tainted with the horrible taste of the 
 preceding generation) have on the whole, on the present English 
 aesthetics, an influence which can be measured by its results. 
 
 The most tangible of the results of this sight-education is (if I 
 appreciate rightly what I have seen) the lately finished City Hall 
 of Manchester. Its stately forms are nothing next to the imag- 
 inative variety of its ornamentations and numberless motives ; 
 and its precious materials, marbles, onyx, granite, woods, glass, 
 
16 
 
 silks, are like nothing when compared to the artistic finish of 
 their workmanship. One must see the poor interior of the pretty- 
 faced Hotel-de-ville du Havre, built at the same time, in order 
 to appreciate the stride made since twenty years by the English 
 workmen, artisans, and decorative artists. 
 
 Let us not forget, however, that the immense garden-collec- 
 tions of England are but indirectly connected with her national 
 teaching, and do good mainly as preparing the taste of their in- 
 numerable chance visitors. 
 
 I was about coming home worried and rather discouraged at not 
 finding more of my looked-for precedents ; that is, finding many 
 gardens of instruction, but none directly connected with a public 
 education-system, when I came across two more interesting facts.^ 
 
 I had visited the popular school of design of Manchester (as 
 well as those of Paris, Lyons, and Geneva), but I comprehended its 
 influence only when I saw in London how all the English schools 
 are connected with that part of the Kensington Institution which 
 gives to all the teachers their complimentary and obligatory 
 diploma for proficiency in teaching drawing, modeling, and paint-* 
 ing, in water-color at least. Tiiis special organization, taken in 
 conjunction with the art-and-nature shows already spoken of, 
 explains the progressuin taste of the English- nation, from Milais 
 to the thousand, admirable unnamed designers on wood, potters, 
 or modellers in clay. Here was another of the precious links I 
 had soughtj for the better enlargement of our public school and 
 teaching. Of course, it had only a distant relation to the garden- 
 school ; since flowers, twigs, and all vegetable models in their na- 
 tural freshness, have to be brought daily into the English school, 
 instead of the school being carried into the garden ; the process 
 was awkward, but the result was good, and one of those looked for. 
 
 The other discovery I made was nearer to our object. It was 
 that of a ground which had no shape yet, except its natural un- 
 dulations tending southward, and resembled an idea developing 
 itself under the touch of spades. In October last the Municipal 
 Council of Paris had voted an appropriation to convert the park 
 of Montsouri into a garden of instruction, to be in some way 
 connected with the public schools of the city. I went there on a 
 line morning, and found the gardeners shaping with their tools 
 
17 
 
 the idea which I had three months before presented to this New 
 York Academy of Sciences in its philosophical nakedness. 
 
 However, I must add to this de visit testimony that I could 
 not learn in detail what will be the relations of this beautiful 
 garden-school to the municipal schools, colleges, or private teach- 
 ings of Paris ; nor what could be the similitudes between the 
 improvements in course of execution at Montsouri and those 
 contemplated here. 
 
 To find a coincidence in the details of execution (the mother - 
 idea being the same) between the views of men like Charton, 
 Littre, and Bourneville, leading members of the Municipal 
 Council of Paris, with ours, would have been a good fortune in 
 one sense. But Littre was sick when I went to see him, Bourne- 
 ville could not be met, and Charton was absent at Versailles ; 
 so that I could learn none of the details of their garden-school 
 plans. Therefore you are at liberty to make this mishap of mine 
 fortunate for you and the city of New York. It leaves you the 
 priority of the idea of garden-schools, since you endorsed it 
 before it was considered by the Municipal Council of Paris ; and 
 it leaves you, too, the entire originality of the plans of execution, 
 which you can now devise in complete ignorance of those of the 
 French officials, and in accordance with the wants of the Ameri- 
 can youth. 
 
 Those of you who have so kindly listened to these explanations 
 and descriptions can now see that I have not beaten the bushes 
 in vain ; on the contrary, that I have brought the game where 
 you are at liberty to take or to let it escape. 
 
 To resume : I have been asked if the idea of garden-schools 
 has precedents, and I have shown its growth in history ; if there 
 are any gardens used for teaching, and we found many ; if grounds 
 of public amusement can be adapted also to instruction, and this 
 duality of object is the salient trait of the most famed gardens ; 
 if there are already in Europe garden-schools connected with any 
 system of popular education, and we found only one such in 
 process of formation. 
 
 As a result of this survey, if I am asked which of the European 
 gardens of instruction can serve us a model, I answer : none. 
 Aping Europe in education, as well as in other matters of 
 2 
 
18 
 
 organic importance, is not desirable. The crops of women and 
 men wanted here are neither the low and needy, nor the artificial 
 and unproductive classes, whose juxtaposition makes the pictur- 
 esque side and the dangerous foundation of old societies. Like 
 the Councillors of the city of Paris, we want the garden -school — 
 not for a few, -but for all. But we deprecate copying even their 
 Montsouri Park — if we could, because such creations must spring 
 up from the genius of each nation, as well as from historical 
 precedents. 
 
 Following these indications, we have found, in the course of 
 our inquiry on the European gardens, that their philosophy runs 
 quite parallel to their chronology ; both showing gardens to have 
 been active instruments of education, as people understood its 
 problems at different periods. Now, turning our regards toward 
 home, we find the same tendency to shape the gardens and the 
 parks, and the collections of art and of natural history together, 
 as means of general education ; all that we need, therefore, is 
 to do it, not slovenly as by fate, but upon a preconcerted plan 
 commensurate with the destinies of the nation. 
 
 In this view let us recapitulate what we have and what we 
 need. We have the most excellent and numerous school-build- 
 ings, though notoriously insufficient for the teaching and com- 
 pletely inadequate to the training. But though there are near 
 them museums, libraries, gardens, parks, exhibitions, etc., the 
 public schools remain isolated from these resorts of taste, activ- 
 ity, interest, and learning ; — a fault which lies both ways. 
 
 If we make an exception to this general criticism, it is for the 
 Museum of Natural History, whose trustees have tried early to 
 establish the link between it and the common school. In 1869 they 
 promised " it would soon be opened, not only as an attraction to 
 visitors from all parts of the United States, but as a school in 
 which our own children will acquire information ; " adding : 
 "We feel that too much stress cannot be laid upon the impor- 
 tance of the institution as a means of public education." Their 
 report of 1872 is no less explicit, when it nominally " invites the 
 teachers and pupils of public schools, and the inmates of chari- 
 table and benevolent institutions, in order that the museum be 
 used for educational purposes, as well as to afford recreation 
 
19 
 
 to the public. (Two days are reserved for the schools.) This 
 arrangement, by furnishing opportunities to the teachers to ex- 
 plain the specimens to their classes, will make the Museum an im- 
 portant part in the educational system of our city." 
 
 These wise provisions being made on one side, why were they 
 not carried out by the other party ? Because of the absence of 
 a link between the school proper and the museum — because the 
 teachers were not prepared ; and I am sorry to say, will not be 
 prepared for some time, since the pupils of the Normal School 
 across the Central Park — who are said to qualify themselves for 
 teaching — do not come to the Museum to learn how to teach 
 Natural History, no more than they go to the Art Museum, or to 
 the School of Design, to learn how to teach drawing. Yet, in 
 Nature are found all the noble forms ; by the hand these forms 
 become the property of man ; to train the hand of our vast 
 population would be to elevate among the laborious communities 
 the American People : there is the link. 
 
 It is painful to acknowledge that our art institutions are be- 
 hind the Museum of Natural History, and far behind the Ken- 
 sington School in liberality towards the children,- and in provision 
 for the art-education of their teachers : as if art was no bread to 
 the needy as a work, as it is bread to the soul as a jouissanoe — 
 the redeemer of sordid interests or besoins, the commentator and 
 revealer of everything noble in human nature. 
 
 But why do we give to these forms of teaching a place in the 
 garden-school % Because they have it in fact and in history, 
 from the typical gardens of the Academy of Athens to the 
 most modern ones in Europe. These two forms are equivalent 
 and substitutive ; the weather permitting, the teaching is given 
 in the open air ; the weather changing, the children find shelter 
 and lessons in the museums. The principle is to not teach any- 
 thing in-doors which can be learned out ; nothing to be taught 
 from books which can from nature ; nothing from dead nature 
 which can from the living. 
 
 Viewed in this light, and compared with those we have seen 
 abroad, our Central Park presents a strange contrast. In its 
 conception and execution the public has been treated like a 
 prince, but the children rather niggardly ; though by its consti- 
 
20 
 
 tuition and by-laws " The Central Park must be used for educa- 
 tional purposes as well as to afford recreation to the public." 
 
 To excuse this breach of such a clear and costly covenant, it 
 may be said that a park cannot well be planned with two ob- 
 jects ; that, if it is a pleasure-ground, it cannot be a study-ground, 
 etc. But, in fact, many European gardens are both. Among 
 others, Kew has seventy-five acres devoted to study, and so dis- 
 posed that none of the pleasure-seekers are gloomed by their sight, 
 nor the students disturbed by the idlers. 
 
 This sophism disposed of experimentally, nothing remains but 
 to retrace our steps, by doing as much in our parks for children 
 as we do for sport and fashion. Otherwise, seeing nothing but 
 ride, riding, riders, they will consider sport as the main object 
 of life, and waste their precious capacities where nothing is 
 needed but a large inheritance and leather breeches. 
 
 This remark is hardly sharp enough, considering how many 
 promising young men have ended their fast park-riding by fast 
 running away. Moreover, the pleasure-grounds provided for 
 children are unvaried, and the smaller ones are denied en- 
 trance to the pa"rk with their own goat-wagon — an " active " 
 exercise rendered " passive " as a monopoly in mercenary hands — 
 these little riders having not even a reserved avenue where they 
 and their mamma or nurse could be safe from intrusion or danger. 
 
 But, to come to apparently more important topics — though I 
 think the best school till the tenth year is the play-ground — and 
 not to tarry in demonstrating what our parks would gain in vari- 
 ety, were they managed according to the letter and spirit of their 
 constitution, " for pleasure and education," we formally demand 
 that they contain garden-schools, or grounds devoted to education. 
 
 Here w r e will naturally meet with the assertion that the bo- 
 tanical garden prepared by the city will virtually be a garden- 
 school. But the difference between these two forms of study- 
 grounds is too great for their confusion not to be insisted upon. 
 In the first place, a botanical garden must contain many plants, 
 arranged according to a complete system of botany ; in a garden- 
 school a few typical specimen plants suffice, arranged after some 
 simple classification, as de Candolle's. Besides this, everything 
 else differs. In the garden-school some plants must be grouped 
 
21 
 
 according to their affinities, so as to express their sympathetic 
 and physiological existence ; others by their climatic habits ; 
 others for their qualities or properties, domestic, nutritious, medi- 
 cal, toxic, etc. ; others as models of lines and colors in the classes 
 of arts and industries. The converse practice of presenting 
 this whole vegetable world bereft of all its meanings, even of 
 its names, is not easy to characterize. 
 
 But, to continue our description of the garden-school : The 
 zoology of the park would gain in scholastic interest if the num- 
 ber of animals was diminished and their variety increased ; and 
 most important, if their surroundings were made conformable to 
 their natural history and habits. Also, in some quiet corner of 
 this department, children would be immensely interested to find 
 in full operation the appliances for artificial hatching, breeding, 
 and fattening poultry, raising the silk- worm, etc. There are hap- 
 piness and millions in the creation of the tastes of the people 
 for such productive and peaceful occupations. 
 
 There is no more reason for the waters of a park to look dead 
 than for its trees to look meaningless. They can be made lively 
 with the appliances of hydraulics and with specimens of their 
 own powers ; they may represent miniatures of the great Ameri- 
 can water-falls, Niagara, Montmorency, etc. ; they must be alive 
 with shells, fishes, water-weeds, and blossoms ; and show plainly 
 the wonders and remunerations of fish culture. 
 
 Geolog}' claims for its study the rocks and cave of the park ; 
 not only on account of their interesting formation, but for the 
 facility they offer of representing, by insertion in sections, the 
 mineral wealth and topography of the country. 
 
 Many other teachings of realities have their place surely 
 marked in our future garden -school, as drawing and carving 
 from plants and animals — all-open-air schools, which need no 
 more buildings and will breed no contagiums. "We insist only on 
 the adoption of the principle, confident that its consequences, 
 health and healthy knowledge, will follow. 
 
 We claim the use of a part of the Central Park for public 
 education in virtue of its Constitution, which consecrates it 
 equally — that is to say, in equal terms — to the pleasure of the 
 public and to the instruction of the youth. 
 
22 
 
 We claim the accession of the grounds and collections which 
 belong to the city, or come under its control, and particularly of 
 Washington Park and museums, to the other means of public 
 instruction and hygiene. 
 
 We claim the scattering of the garden-teaching all over the 
 available city-grounds, instead of its proposed concentration in a 
 privileged enclosure. These grounds to be selected, either for 
 their fitness, or for their proximity to schools or industries, for 
 instance. In the remnant of park called the Battery, the front- 
 • ing could be made the rugged home of madrepores, astreas, sea- 
 anemones, sea-weeds, etc. The lands of Jones' Woods would 
 £row the heavy American timber, and their water-front serve as 
 aquarium and water-gynasium. The Sahara called Tompkins 
 Square could generate oxygen if it was thickly planted with 
 aromatics, vegetables, and flowers. The Washington Square is 
 wanted for an avarium, rosarium, and other collections of flowers 
 and vines, in order uot only to teach the scholars, but to elevate 
 several of our best art-industries. 
 
 This park is surrounded by a population which enfranchises 
 us from the enormous tribute once paid to foreign skill for arti- 
 ficial flowers, leaves, trimmings, bird-mounting, etc. A little 
 encouragement by fine models, and a slight education of the 
 eye, would enable this truly respectable part of our population 
 to soon compete with the Italian and the French in foreign 
 markets, and to levy industrial tributes where we were once 
 tributaries. As an illustration, three sisters of one of my friends 
 studied the perfect roses fronting Luxembourg with such suc- 
 cess that Batton paid for their roses six dollars each ; and there 
 is in that row four well-known rose-trees which must have repaid 
 to the city of Paris one million francs in unequalled art-imi- 
 tations. 
 
 I regret to say (but it is necessary to say it) there is not in all 
 our parks a decent rose worth copying, nor a pink, a hyacinth, a 
 meadow-saffron peeping with naturalness through the young 
 grass to invite the pencil of artists to grace, or the tongue of 
 children to picturesqueness. But my heart is too full of the 
 emptiness of idea which rules these public matters to continue 
 its criticism ; humiliation silences me. As a last advice : 
 
23 
 
 What is for select children a real-school on a tray, and for 
 infants a kindergarten on a quadrated table, we want for all 
 the children — a comprehensive garden-school system, taking 
 place in true gardens, complemented by museums, and comple- 
 menting the public school. 
 
 In support of this demand, we have shown that the improve- 
 ments in European gardening are all that way — that is, tending 
 to make these public resorts more educational ; we have seen 
 them losing their mythological, princely, or technical features, 
 and assuming more and more the character of popular institu- 
 tions of taste, of learning, and of health-culture. 
 
 I would not stop to argue how much more necessary than in 
 Europe is the advent of this latter class of educational institu- 
 tions in our Republic, where the problem of education contains 
 the solution of the social problem, and where all must receive, 
 not the highest possible education, but the naost physiological. 
 And it is directly by its physiological basis and bearing that this 
 projected enlargement of our school and school -system concerns 
 this Academy of Sciences. 
 
 Otherwise, the plan of the garden -schools is so simple that 
 one looks in vain for an objection to \\&fiat. But what is not so 
 simple is the obtention of the good-will and concourse of several 
 city authorities to its execution. The present lecture is, in fact, 
 a memorial written to bring these authorities to a consensus 
 uniform with the conclusions presented last spring to the Major 
 by a committee of this Academy. His Honor and his counsel- 
 lors wanted more documents, particularly in regard to European 
 precedents; I went to seek these precedents with my own eyes, 
 and I wrote them down as you just heard ; not to convince you — 
 since you were convinced at the first audition — but to invite you 
 to give the same support to this matured plan of out-door education 
 which you gave last year to its first and less precise proposition. 
 
 Just now great efforts are made to tear a few loaves from the 
 mouths of trusty teachers, in order to erect new school-houses 
 for the crowding-in of a few hundred more pupils. Therefore, 
 this is no unfavorable time to show where there are better rooms 
 and healthier accommodations for thousands more children, for 
 the better training of their active functions, of their executive 
 senses, and of the higher sense of the dutiful and the beautiful. 
 
24 
 
 In consequence, I beg the Academy to name a committee for 
 the presentation of this memorial to the Mayor of the City of 
 New York, to the Head Commissioners of the Parks, of Public 
 Health, and of Education, and to the superintendents of the public 
 schools of New York, of Brooklyn, and of the State of New York, 
 advising them to take this plan of garden-schools into practical 
 consideration. 
 
 E. Seguest. 
 
 New York, Feb. 1, 1878. 
 
 After the reading of this memorandum, the Academy nomi- 
 nated a committee to report upon the action to be taken in the 
 matter. But the wicked gets up earlier than the just. Before 
 that committee could meet, the news came that the Mayor would 
 listen to the proposition of taking part of Washington Square 
 for an armory, and to the objections which could be made to 
 this proposition, previously to sending his approval of it to the 
 legislature. 
 
 Taken by surprise, land-owners, physicians, and citizens of all 
 social standing, protested ; the Academy did the same in writing, 
 and verbally one of its committee qualified the premeditated 
 spoliation as a crime. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later, the authorities of the city had endorsed 
 the iniquity and sent it to be made a law at Albany. 
 
 Now, let us suppose that it has become a law. Will it be less 
 iniquitous? The destruction of St. John's Park was legally con- 
 summated. Does not its iniquity grow every year more odious 
 as children die around it of summer complaint ? Will the 
 wresting of the Washington Play-ground be less loathsome when 
 it is legalized ? Its inception, plotting, planning legiferation are, 
 and will remain, singly and collectively, a crime. 
 
 We appeal from this crime to the mothers who sent their in- 
 fants there ; to the teachers, who know so well the wants of air 
 of their pupils; to the physicians, who have to contend against 
 the killing oppression of our atmosphere ; to the memory of the 
 best friend the children of the poor and middle classes ever had, 
 and who departed at the time his benevolent influence was most 
 needed— THEODORE ROOSEVELT.