I have just receivd yours of 4th inst.

I must, in the first place, privately confess to you that I am so far from being satisfied with the prevalent fashions and customs in regard to the matter of your inquiry that I am less well informed than you might expect me to be. I have more than once advised applicants for my services in laying out burial places to go to someone with more experience and less out of tune in this respect than I consider myself to be. Mr Adolph Strauch of Cincinatti and Mr J. Widenmann of New York are the only respectable authorities whom I know on the subject.

For the above reason I am but poorly prepared to give you the information and advice you ask.

The more notable Cemetery Companies of which I have knowledge are as follows:

Besides the above I have had occasion to visit cemeteries that seemed to be under good management and of the better class at Quebec, Springfield, Mass. Georgetown, D.C. and Louisville, Ky. but do not know their corporate designations. There are many more which I have not visited.

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The greater number of those grounds have been laid out, like Lone Mountain piece-meal or in desultory way, on no fixed principles of design. Every good thing in them stands by itself, gaining nothing from and adding nothing to the other elements of the scenery. Mr Strauch of Cincinatti has the honor of introducing what for this climate is, in this respect a great improvmnt, in what is known as the “lawn system.” It is not adapted to your climate but its main advantage of broad effects and the avoidance of petty and discordant details may perhaps be secured by other means. It allows, as a general rule, but one (family) monument for each burial lot, conceals the boundaries of lots, does away with posts and chains and iron work and gives the company the duty of setting and careing for all plants so that an appropriate general sylvan effect may be secured.

Some months since Mr Robinson of the Garden asked me to send him material for an article on American Cemeteries and I applied to Mr Strauch for assistance. He was good enough to collect and send me a number of reports of Trustees of Cemeteries laid out more or less in accordance with his views, which together with every scrap of print I had on the subject I transmitted to London. But for this I might have been able to answer you more fully & satisfactory. A letter addressd by mail to the Trustees or the Secretary of either of the Companies I have named would, however, probably procure, in most cases, their last printed report and, in some, copies of the forms and blank used & of the by-laws.

I prepared a plan and report for a cemetery at Oakland while I was in California and both I think were printed. So far as there was any originality in the design I do not think it was carried out nor could it be without some unusual pluck and capital. I don’t think that I should be at all satisfied with it.