170 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



A landscape engineer of the mathematical school produces beautiful 

 effects by a skillful combination of geometrical figures, such as the 

 circle, the ellipse, the crescent, the triangle, the square, the star, the 

 polygon. He uses freely either straight lines or curved lines, and by 

 means of stone walls, parapets, paved terraces, and esplanades his 

 work shades into and harmonizes with structures which are strictly 

 architectural. In the natural school straight lines are avoided, the 

 existing contours of the surface are followed as closely as possible, 

 the grouping of shrubs, trees, greensward, flowers, steep banks, gentle 

 slopes and level spaces is so contrived as to seem only a heightening 

 of the natural beauty of the scene. 



Each school has its merits; if the one is better here the other may 

 be better there; and it is often possible to combine the principles of 

 the two schools with the happiest effect. The mathematical style of 

 treatment is more appropriate for lawns, for the grounds about public 

 buildings (unless they are very extensive), for grass plots in the streets, 

 and, in general, for spaces of small extent, in close proximity to 

 buildings with which the outdoor ornamentations must harmonize; 

 Avhile the natural style is appropriate for extensive parks having a 

 diversified surface, which controls the artistic treatment by suggesting^ 

 lines of beauty already latent in the ground, and needing only the 

 keen eye and skillful touch of a master of landscape art to bring them, 

 out. 



The mathematical style is apt to be frigid and artificial unless it is 

 confined strictly to those cases in which the limited space to be 

 adorned, the monotony of the surface, or the proximity of buildings 

 renders it impossible to use any other style with pleasing effect. The 

 unpleasant and inartistic development of mathematical lines is seen in 

 its most exaggerated form when one figure is repeated over and over, 

 as, for example, the repetition of the square in the usual method of 

 laying out cities and towns and in land surveys. The national gov- 

 ernment has covered the whole country with a checker work of 

 straight lines and right angles, thus doing all in its power to mar and 

 obscure its natural beauty. In this prairie country very little was 

 needed to convert whole counties into the verisimilitude of a ma^nifi- 

 cent park if the graceful curves of nature had been followed. If the 

 roads had been left to follow the line of least resistance they would 

 have been at once cheaper, better, and more beautiful. The rectang- 



