STRUCTURES IN LANDSCAPE 225 



fitted to its particular situation before the designer can properly feel 

 that he has done his best.* 



In designs of a generally loose texture, where beauty of definiteness 

 of form is not insisted on, and especially in rough and broken country, 

 and in wooded country where only a small portion of the path may be 

 seen at any one time, continuity of curve in a path usually becomes 

 of no value whatever (see' Drawing II, opp. p. 30), and adaptation 

 to the topography and direction towards points of larger view and to 

 little minor interests of fallen log and outcropping rock are the results 

 to be sought. Such paths, if there is any considerable traffic, particu- 

 larly in places open to the public where the danger of destruction is 

 greater, should be definite enough and convenient enough to lead the 

 traffic along them and not to tempt people to short cuts and wanderings 

 destructive of the scenery. The path surface, too, should offer reason- 

 ably good footing, but beyond this point the less definite, the less con- 

 spicuous, the less exactly parallel-sided the paths are, the better. 



Where a path which carries but little traffic must cross a lawn and 

 cannot on account of the scale of the design or for some other reason 

 be concealed by the modeling of the ground, it may be constructed 

 of stepping stones set in the turf, slightly sunken so that the grass 

 beside and between the stones conceals them in any distant view. 

 Where the traffic is very light it may go directly over the turf, and if it 

 be possible by the erection of temporary barriers to direct the traffic 

 over one turf area while another is recovering, very considerable traffic 

 may be handled with no particular detriment to the landscape appear- 

 ance. 



In formal landscape design, the roads and paths take their share Roads in 

 with the turf areas, the parterres, the curbs, the low shrub masses, and ^°^^^ 

 the flower beds, as parts of the pattern with which the ground is dec- 

 orated.! The roads and paths, however, can never escape from the 



* Cf. Piickler-Muskau's account of his care in staking out a path up a hill, in 

 his Andeutungen uher Landschafts-gdrtnerei, 1834, p. 114-116, and Atlas, plate V e. 

 Also quoted in Parsons' Art of Landscape Architecture, 1915, p. 134-135. (See Refer- 

 ences.) 



t See also the French so-called informal designs as illustrated, for instance, in 

 Andre's UArt des Jardins, 1879, p. 787. 

 Q 



