door work, including, also, the vacation schools which use the parks two sessions each week, was nearly 99,000.

Located at Vine and Mather Streets at the North end, whither it moved this year from Riverside Park, is the Baby Hospital, presided over by trained nurses and under the supervision of a committee of physicians. This has proved a godsend to many wee citizens of the East Side, who, without the careful nursing and fresh air of this tented ward would have yielded up their lives in an unequal struggle.

A municipal building which shall have ample office room is now a burning question in Hartford. The historic City Hall has been outgrown. Four sites, favored by the majority of those interested as being the most suitable among a possible nineteen, are: first, at the corner of Pearl and Ford streets, where now stands the row of wooden buildings referred to in an earlier paragraph, and, second, on the south side of Asylum Hill, west of the railroad tracks. If placed on either spot, it would be easily accessible from all parts of the city and especially from the railway station. If the former site were chosen, located as it would be, across the street from the Y. M. C. A.,

it would also form a handsome addition to the Bushnell Park group of buildings, to be discussed later. Third, on Main Street, south of the Morgan memorial, and, fourth, on the corner of Pearl and Trumbull streets, this latter site to occupy practically all the block between Trumbull and Lewis streets, with the exception of the land on which stands the National Fire Insurance building.

In this connection has arisen the question as to whether this building shall be a permanent structure, or planned only for a term of, say, twentyfive years. It would seem as though, in view of the necessarily large outlay of money, it would be more economical in the end to secure a site on which a building suitable to serve indefinitely might be erected.

Much building naturally has been going on which has added to the artistic beauty of the city, in which the Municipal Art Society has not had a direct hand.

E

LEVEN years ago Mr. William B. de Las Casas, the able chairman of the Metropolitan Park Commission, wrote for THE NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE SO entertaining and comprehensive an account of the Middlesex Fells that any subsequent exposition, either of its charms or of the difficulties and prejudices amidst which it was created to be a breathing place for a community of more than a million people, is likely to involve repetition and dilution. No one else, in all probability, has so sympathetically and so accurately described the delights that await the sojourner in a region of breezy uplands and glistening lakes, all within a ten-mile radius of the Golden Dome on Beacon Hill. Nowhere else have been brought together so many historical data concerning the Middlesex Fells, beginning with the famous expedition of Governor John Winthrop in 1632 which gave a name to Cheese Rock and ending with the story of the earlier efforts of the newly appointed Commission to accommodate to the needs of the populace using them the conditions in the woodland entrusted to their control.

There really remains only to add an occasional postscript to Mr. de Las Casas' monumental contribution, to the effect that some one of the important steps scheduled in the popularization of this beautiful area have been taken.

And one of these forward steps was made in the summer just passing. Heretofore one of the limitations of

the wooded park-a defect which some, selfishly inclined, might regard as a virtue has been a certain inaccessibility. For fifteen years or more the Fells have been there, unapproachably charming at all seasons of the year, their wind-swept crags blushing with the sumach and barberry or opalescent with the mantle of new fallen snow; their lakes gleaming like diamonds in the sunlight or glowing like pearls under a cloudy sky. Yet to glimpse the beauties of the reservation it has heretofore been necessary either to have a special vehicle, in which to traverse the excellent roadways of the reservation or to walk for a considerable distance from points well outside the Fells. The trolley service that has brought most of the parks of greater Boston within easy reach of the populated blocks has barely approached this open area of three thousand acres.

that

Even back in the days of the preliminary Metropolitan Park Commission, whose work, under the secretaryship of Mr. Sylvester Baxter, is gratefully remembered; it was intended eventually a line of street cars should bisect the park, making the attractions. of Spot Pond and its environing hills readily and inexpensively available to all the people who regard the dome of the Statehouse as the Hub of the Universe. This original plan has at last been carried out, in part. On August 15, 1909, the Boston Elevated Railway Company, which, about two years be

fore, had received authorization to build into the Fells from Medford to Spot Pond, opened its line. The privilege of continuing the route to Stoneham Square and thence of developing a much-needed short line to the cities of the Merrimac Valley rests with the Boston and Northern Company. Work on this latter extension is progressing rapidly at the present writing.

The effects of the consequent democratization of the great reservation of 3000 acres will be interesting to watch. The Middlesex Fells, in the past ten years or more, have acquired a sort of body of titleless proprietors-urbanites and suburbanites who, on every possible occasion, spend an hour or a half day or a day within its bounds.

To this public-landed gentry the name of "Fells," first applied to the region by Mr. Baxter back in the seventies, is synonymous with quiet walks over well-graded roadways and by

sale of snow shoes and skis in the cold winters of 1903-4 and 1904-5 was remarkably brisk; a large proportion of them must have been used in the Middlesex Fells, where wobbly trails extended through every glade. The subsequent seasons have been a little disappointing, on account of the failure of Boreas to assist. Only another oldfashioned winter, however, is needed to double the number of groups of ruddycheeked young men and maidens striding among pines and oaks with the walk taught by Indian guides. It will also bring out again the cohorts of adventurous boys and girls on the Norsemen's locomotives, skimming down rocky hillsides, leaping across ravines and coasting far out upon the surface of the snow-covered lakes. This is a pasture for the young and lithe. Elderly gentlemen and stout ladies of the modern Athens sometimes

provide themselves with skis and essay ski-running in the Fells; for such folk it is better to cling to the valleys and to take no slope that drops more than five feet in a hundred. Those, too, who before or after trial find that skis are absolutely unsafe, discover solace in days of early and late winter when the ice on the lakes of the Fells is in perfect condition and skating is allowed.

For these and other sports the big reservation to the north of Boston is nearly ideal. Geologically it is the most primitive of the forested parks of the metropolitan district-a region of roots of ancient mountains, worn off by the grind of the glaciers and weathered into greyness by the storms of a thousand centuries. It displays for the naturalist some of the flora and fauna of the uplands of northern New England. The reserved mountain chain to the south of Boston, the Blue Hill