I have recevd yours of 21st. The objection to the Small Pox Hospital lies in the effect it will have on the imaginations of the people. Of course the park is the last place in all of the unoccupied suburbs of the city where it can stand appropriately and there is no position in the park where it can go without being an offence to good taste.

The special objection to the position you suggest is that a small pox hospital there would render valueless good house lots, now city property but which may otherwise be expected in a few years to be brought favorably into the market with the advantages of frontage on the park, of a street railroad passing close by, of good roads, and a near market, church, post office &c (at St Jean Baptiste). Also that it would be even at present much nearer to this village than it is proper to place such a hospital. St Jean Baptiste, whenever the park begins to exist as a park, will be sure to gain rapidly in population and prosperity and will spread over the park lands. There is no ground in the rear of the Hotel Dieu in which the necessary buildings could stand so that there would be a space of more than a hundred feet between them and a public road, as roads are proposed and will soon need to be laid out. I have no doubt that it will in the end cost the city a great deal more if the hospital is placed [314] here than in the location I have advised. The latter is much the more isolated site really and apparently.

The objection you present does not appear to me weighty for this reason. The site you propose would be closely passed in going to the other which I have suggested, therefore until after passing that point, whichever is taken, the same route would ordinarily and might by regulation always be followed. The occasion for moving patients is not frequent. They should be moved in close vehicles in no way specially noticable and they would rarely be observed or known to be bound for the hospital until after leaving the public road. The actual danger is nothing. The only important question is that of the remoteness of the hospital itself and in this respect the site I advise has obviously very greatly the advantage.

I think that it would prove a great injury to your property to place the hospital anywhere between Bleury Street or the Frothingham property and St. Jean Baptiste.

As to your inquiry about planting, a little reflection will show you that if trees could be made to grow in rows at regular intervals on each side of the present wheel way of your half built road up the mountain they would simply call attention to and make more marked the present prominent, rude, artificial character of the cuttings and embankments between which it is carried. These have been made with such misunderstanding of the purpose with which the road was laid out that I believe that it would be true economy to tear the whole work up and build it over again. But if it is out of the question as I suppose it is just now, there is little to be done to improve the road until you begin the excavation for the Reservoir. Every spade full that comes from that should be used with the greatest possible care and judgement to hide and make less conspicuous the unnatural character of the embankment on which the road rests. When this has been done, but not before, it will be desirable to plant trees & bushes near it, not by any means in rows and at regular intervals but naturally, in groups and clusters and thickets, with frequent glades and openings where under favorable circumstances distant views can be best commanded.

What you chiefly need at present is to be getting the proper assortment of trees and shrubs for the purpose growing in proper permanent nurseries, particularly the Siberian trees & others which I recommended you to get as seedlings from Scotland.

Planting such as you did last year without system or design is a waste of money.