restored and protected by rip-rapping. Artificial banks have been graded to natural slopes. Nursery stock has been cultivated. Elm, maple, larch, ash, cedar, spruce, walnut, and mulberry trees have been planted. Virginia creepers, bitter sweet and other plants have been set out in barren places. New sign-boards have been erected in place of the old ones. Refuse cans have been installed. Watering troughs and drinking fountains have been erected. And economical mechanical methods have been adopted instead of handwork in the care of the driveways. In these and many other ways the physical condition of the Reservation has been brought up to a state of attractiveness, accessibility and safety never before attained.

METHODS OF ADMINISTRATION.

Turning now from the physical to the administrative phases of the Reservation, it should be borne in mind that the problems here presented are of an extraordinary nature probably realized by few. The State Reservation at Niagara is not a quiet little village green or a city park. To all the demands which such public areas make upon their administrators the Niagara Commissioners have added peculiar responsibilities due to the unusual physical characteristics of their charge. The total superficial area of the Reservation is 412 acres, but of this amount, 300 acres is a cataclysm of tumultuous, whirling, and plunging water. The very sight of this ponderous and overwhelming surge appears to produce a strange psychological effect upon certain temperaments. It is therefore necessary that the employees of the Commission should possess peculiar capabilities and readiness of resource.

Another fact which the Commission has been obliged constantly to have in mind is this: That while there are only about 112 acres of land in the Reservation, they present a total accessible water front of about seven and a half miles. This is not counting the shore line of the inaccessible lands. This seven and a half miles of water front, some of it very high and precipitous and all of it bordering the irresistible current of the Niagara, would be extremely dangerous to visitors but for the specially devised safeguards erected at some points and the eternal vigilance exercised at all points by the employees.

The very conditions which give Niagara its awful grandeur and sublimity thus create peculiar requirements of administration which few persons realize, and the care for visitors has not been confined to preventing overt breaches of the peace, but has included a solicitude to protect them from their own intentional or unintentional indiscretions.

PAN-AMERICAN YEAR.

The most notable single year of the decade under review was 1901, during which the Pan-American Exposition was held in Buffalo and the enormous aggregate of three million persons visited the Falls. These great crowds were handled with ease and without any fatalities. This task was facilitated by placing the police officers and others in the employ of the Commission in uniforms. The result has been not only to improve their appearance, but also to increase their pride in the performance of their duties and to add to their influence upon the visiting public. The character and effectiveness of the force has thus been materially changed for the better.

CARRIAGE SERVICE REFORM.

In pursuance of the continuous policy of the Commission to protect the public, a radical reform in the public carriage service has been effected, and the conditions which once made the Niagara Falls hackman a bye-word the world over no longer prevail. By a plan which has been characterized by fairness to the drivers, we have evolved a system of which the public have little cause to complain.

Miscellaneous hack-stands and the indiscriminate solicitation of fares in the Reservation have been abolished, and three hackstands for public carriages established in Riverway. This marginal thoroughfare being part of the Reservation and under the control of the Commission, it has been in the power of the latter to establish rigid regulations for the use of the stands therein. Within the reservation, the Commission has developed a service which is about as perfect as can be expected. The operating com