I have received from you a communication in behalf of your Board, inviting me to take part in an examination of the plantations of Prospect Park. I much regret that I shall be unable to visit Brooklyn at the time specified. At some other time I shall be thankful for an opportunity to advise with the Commissioners on the subject.

Within a few years after my public relations with your Department ended, in a private and personal capacity I repeatedly and strenuously urged that, to prevent a great waste of what had before been done, it was essential that the plantations of Prospect Park should be gradually thinned with cautious discretion, under the close personal direction of a man of capacity, trained and practiced in such duty, and who would understand and be in sympathy with the motives of the design and respect the principles with regard to which the plantations had been started. Also, that certain operations equally essential to prevent the frustration of important features of the design, then nearly [333]realized, should be intelligently pursued to a successful end. I felt it to be so wasteful and so altogether pitiable that the latter object should be neglected that I expressed my willingness not only to give such personal services as might be desirable, but to furnish needed plants at my own expense. Straightened circumstances and the political necessity of accommodating the management to the conditions of public opinion, even though unwise public opinion, were given me as reasons for not following such counsel.

The planting of Prospect Park began about ten years after that of Central Park. Out of a similar regard for an inconsiderate, improvident, ignorant, superstitious and deluded superficial public opinion, a suitable thinning of the plantations of Central Park was, also, most wastefully prevented for many years. Two years ago, as a warning of what results were impending in Prospect Park, I sent to each member of your Board a copy of a pamphlet containing a brief history of the plantations of Central Park, and with it, not simply a statement of my opinion, but a body of testimony as to facts of experience given by many eminent tree planters. This testimony establishes the supreme folly of the supposed public opinion that had been alleged as the reason of the course of management—pursued with reference to the plantations of the park; vindicates the proverbial injunction to planters, “Plant thick and thin quick,” and enforces the conviction that prolonged delay of thinning must lead to a condition of well-started plantations that can be judiciously dealt with only by a complete clearance and re-planting of the ground.

There can be no question of park management calling for a higher order of artistic and technical wisdom, or more patient and painstaking personal detailed direction, than that with which your Board is now confronted. The importance cannot be overestimated of a refined, sensitive and seriously studied discrimination between those trees and bushes that remain available for producing the landscape character with regard to which the original outlay for all the constructive work of Prospect Park was planned, and those which can no longer remain on the ground, only to cause a yet more scandalous waste than has yet occurred of the value of the property with the care of which the Commissioners have been entrusted.

Your obedient servant,