Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/335

Rh on January 20, 1783, reached Philadelphia, by way of Cadiz, Spain, on the twenty-seventh of March.

The flora of Manhattan Island and its vicinity, in the time of Henry Hudson, is shown in the New York Botanical Garden, where these specimens are indicated by the letter "H," and in the parks of Brooklyn and Queens boroughs, a special sign in this case indicating the trees and shrubs which grew here in 1609. It is difficult for those who see this city of stone, brick and concrete to imagine its appearance in Henry Hudson's time, when stretches of meadow land alternated with groves or small forests of trees, over the greater part of the territory, while the upper part of Manhattan Island was traversed with rocky ridges rising in some cases to a considerable height above tide-water. Except in the outlying portions of the city, all these irregularities have been effaced, but the large parks, especially Morningside Park and a portion of Central Park above 100th Street, still show much of the primitive conditions.

Such a transformation makes the old pictures of Manhattan Island seem unreal, nevertheless it should be a consolation for the present landowners to know that the land was duly and legally acquired by the first Dutch settlers, and although Peter Minuit may have made a good bargain, the title is clear and without stain.

Those who wish to form some idea of the fauna of this region at the time of Hudson's arrival should visit the New York Zoological Garden, where the specimens in question are marked by the flag of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. In the New York Aquarium appropriate signs have also been placed on the tanks containing fish indigenous to the Hudson River and the waters surrounding New York.

For many special exhibitions catalogues have been prepared at considerable expense. The price at which they are sold scarcely covers the cost of printing them from the plates. A first edition of 5,000 to 10,000 copies has been printed, but when this supply is exhausted new editions of, say, 2,000 copies will be issued from time to time as occasion requires.

One of the leading features of the celebration will be a grand banquet of 2,000 persons in the magnificent new dining-hall of the Hotel Astor. This will be the greatest fine banquet ever given in this country, and the use of the hall has been held back to have this the initial banquet. It is true that in point of size it can not be compared with the dinner given to 22,000 maires of the French communes, at the opening of the Paris Exposition in 1889. Some idea of the gigantic proportions of this function may be given by the fact that the plates used in serving the dinner, if placed on top of each other, would have made a pile two miles in height. However, this was merely a dinner, while the function in the Hotel Astor is a grand banquet faultless in every detail.

In Brooklyn the social side of the celebration will find expression in