278 3LanJ>scape Hrcbitecture 



thing that will contribute to the highest practicable 

 ideal of pastoral scenery, should we endeavour to 

 secure any degree of those other ideals, of which the 

 best types are found under widely dissimilar cir- 

 cumstances. 



"Although we cannot have wild mountain defiles, 

 for instance, in the park, we may have stony ravines 

 shaded with trees, and made picturesque with shrubs, 

 the forms and arrangement of which remind us of 

 mountain scenery. We may, perhaps, even secure 

 some slight approach to the mystery, variety, and 

 richness of tropical scenery by an assemblage of 

 certain forms of vegetation, gay with flowers, and 

 intricate and mazy with vines and creepers, ferns, 

 rushes, and broad-leaved plants. All we can do in 

 these directions must be confessedly imperfect and 

 suggestive rather than satisfying to the imagination. 

 It must, therefore, be made incidental and sub- 

 ordinate to our first purpose. " 



When it is fully recognized that the poetic, artistic 

 quality of a public park constitutes one of its chief 

 assets of value, and that the development of the features 

 that lend this quality to the landscape is of supreme 

 advantage, the following words of Mr. Olmsted are 

 specially pertinent, giving an idea of the vast extent 

 that a park development may reach. Speaking of Mt. 

 Royal Park, Montreal, he writes: 



"Among properties of its class your mountain 

 park possesses one marked advantage over all others, 



