APPENDIX 331 



would be of general advantage if the names of practitioners of recog- 

 nized skill were given more publicity. If a list of such men could be 

 compiled and published, it would be a public service. There is, how- 

 ever, obviously no accepted authority which can determine which prac- 

 titioners are skilled and which not. Any list of skilled practitioners 

 would therefore be an affair of odious comparisons. It would be pos- 

 sible and unobjectionable, however, to publish lists of the members of 

 the professional societies, or local chapters of societies, in any profession 

 There are of course practitioners of ability who are not members of 

 these societies. However, if the societies are at all worth while the 

 great majority of the skilled practitioners would be members. 



To avoid a great deal of repetition in correspondence and to set Professional 

 forth for the benefit of the client the general way in which the land- Announcements 

 scape architect does his work, most practitioners have some form of 

 professional statement or circular in more or less detail which they 

 may send to prospective clients to define as far as possible the rela- 

 tions which are to exist between the client and his professional adviser. 

 A general statement of this kind is used by architects which has the 

 sanction of the American Institute of Architects. The activities of the 

 landscape architect are more varied and so more difficult to codify, 

 but the American Society of Landscape Architects has issued such a 

 general statement for the benefit of its members.* 



Public exhibitions of the work of landscape architects are valuable Public 

 in two ways : they give the practitioner a chance to see what other 

 practitioners are doing, and they give the public a chance to see some- 

 thing of the work of the profession as a whole. In both these ways, 

 exhibitions jointly with architects, sculptors, and other artists, and 

 with engineers and others concerned in city planning, are particularly 

 desirable. In such exhibitions, the landscape architect, like the en- 

 gineer but even to a greater degree, is at a serious disadvantage in the 

 eyes of the public. A great deal of his work, however beautiful it may 

 be in actual execution, is incapable of representation on plan in any way 

 which would make it particularly decorative or intelligible to an un- 

 trained person, and perspective drawings or even photographs of in- 

 formal and naturalistic design seldom make striking pictures and sel- 

 dom convey the atmosphere of the original. 



* See Transactions, 1922-26, p. 26 ff. 



