68 
PARK AND CE-MRTERY 
“VANDAL BRIDGE/' PROSPECT PARK, BROOK^ 
LYN, N, Y, 
The accompanying illustration shows a view of 
“VANDAL BRIDGE,” PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
Vandal Bridge, in Prospect Park, a work much ad- 
mired for its rugged, picturesque beauty. It spans 
the bridle road, and forms a footpath over it known 
as “Rocky Pass.” The vegetation growing around 
and over the bridge will eventually cover it with a 
luxuriant growth of shrubbery that will make it seem 
still more like a work of nature. It was the inten- 
tion of the designer that there should be as little as 
possible of man’s work apparent, and to that end the 
work of the stone mason where absolutely necessary 
has been carefully concealed. The boulders are those 
commonly known as “nigger heads,” which are found 
naturally in that part of Long Island, and have been 
rejected by builders as too hard to break for founda- 
tion stones. The stones are rugged and massive, 
many of them weighing as much as five tons. Very 
little cutting was required in order to make them fit 
together, and the only expense incurred was for labor 
and a small amount of cement used in the interior 
parts to save time and labor in fitting every stone. 
The work was designed by Mr. John De Wolf, land- 
scape architect of the New York Park system, to 
whose courtesy we owe the illustration, and was con- 
structed by park employes under his direction. 
WATER GARDENS. 
Bulletin of New England Association of Park Super- 
intendents. 
We cordially agree with Mr. Dawson’s vigorous 
handling of the subject of park ponds. I think many 
of the park ponds have been made unnecessarily ugly 
by engineers or by gardeners who are over-fond of 
formality and have very little love of natural effects. 
As a matter of fact, if a pond is intended to be natural 
and informal, it is never necessary to use either rip- 
rap walls or curbing around the water edge. A shore 
can always be made of earth protected by natural 
vegetation, or of a gentle slope covered with coarse 
sand or gravel. Nine times out of ten the difficulty 
of properly treating the shore of a pond arises from 
the slope above and below the water being continu- 
ous with each other and too steep, and there should 
be a beach rising a few inches above water on a slope 
of I in 5 or I in lo, and continuing to the depth of 
three to six inches below water, with the same gentle 
slope. Such a beach made of gravel of suitable size 
will stand very heavy wave action. Another difficulty 
arises where water birds are kept in a park pond in 
that they destroy the turf or plants which would 
otherwise beautify and protect the shore. In that case 
a gravel beach with appropriate waterside bushes and 
trees, where there is no objection to obstructing the 
view, is the best treatment. 
John C. Olmsted. 
THE ELM LEAF BEETLE, 
Bulletin of New England Association of Park Super- 
intendents. 
The Elm Leaf Beetle appeared again in this city 
the past season and the methods for its suppression 
was in the first place to scrape all the loose bark from 
the trunks from the ground up to the main limbs. 
The bark thus removed was found to contain large 
numbers of the papae which were destroyed in the 
burning of the bark. 
The second move was to apply with a stiff fibre 
brush the Kerosene Emulsion. We found the brush 
to work better than the spraying process which was 
tried the previous year. In addition to the treatment 
of the trunks of the trees, with a sprinkling pot, the 
ground all under the trees was sprinkled with the 
emulsion, the crevices between the bricks and paving 
stones, where the pupae were secreted were well 
saturated. As soon as the trees were leaved out the 
spraying operation was begun and continued for some 
five weeks. We used the arsenate of lead prepara- 
tion as used formerly by the Gypsy Moth Commis- 
sion, and the preparation called Disparene prepared 
by the Bowker Chemical Co., of Boston. Both of 
these preparations were effective where properly ap- 
plied. The sections of our city that were infested 
worst the previous year were attended to first and the 
foliage was well preserved. Those trees that were 
reached later on were found to be infested jnuch 
