34 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



If a town is to be laid out on any given tract of land, 

 the first question in the mind of a landscape architect 

 should be : How can the area be divided so as to secure 

 the best disposition of the different departments whose 

 necessities can be forseen and provided for ? 



How can the streets be best adapted to the natural 

 shape of the ground, so as to economize cost of construc- 

 tion, and attain ease of grade and facility of drainage, by 

 taking advantage of the opportunities offered by nature 

 to save expense of cutting and filling, while preserving 

 the most desirable building sites in the best positions 

 relative to the roads? 



How can any naturally attractive features, such as a 

 river, a lake or a mountain, near or distant, be made to 

 minister to the beautiful or picturesque character of^the 

 place, by adapting the arrangement to the development 

 vof their most attractive aspects? 



Every one can see in the mere statement of these ques- 

 tions, (which are but samples of many which will readily 

 suggest themselves), that the answers must involve possi- 

 bilities of vital moment in a sanitary, economic and 

 esthetic sense, and although the answers may be only 

 approximately and conjecturally correct, it by no means 

 follows that there is no room for the exercise of judgment. 

 To pretend that their conditions can be best filled by an 

 invariable adherence to the rectangular system, is as ab- 

 surd as would be the assertion that the convenience and 

 economy and comfort of every family would be best 

 secured by living in a square house, with square rooms, 

 of a uniform size. The rectangular system has this in its 



