As man has more and more greatly utilized natural resources, the amount of actually wild randscape has decreased, and in our time it is decreasing at an enormously accelerated rate, so that the unhampered expressions of nature's forces remain only in inaccessible and inhos pitable places, and even there they are rapidly passing away before the blind destructive power of man's enterprise. A possession of inesti mable value to mankind is thus becoming in our country so rare that we are beginning to appreciate its preciousness, and the responsi bility rests largely upon the landscape archi tects of this generation to see to it that the best of the scattered remnants of natural character and natural beauty, which we still have left to us, are preserved for the recreation and inspira tion of the future generations. Almost within the memory of living men has come the effec tive conception of the city as a complete organ ism which must provide for its inhabitants such things as they cannot provide for themselves for complete and efficient living; and with this conception has come the realization of the im portance to the individual, and so to the com munity, of beauty, and especially of outdoor beauty, and the duty which the community has to provide it. This duty has been put before the community very definitely in these times, not only in the housing for war workers in this country, but especially in the reconstruction of cities and countrysides destroyed in the war.
We are now coming to see that this same con ception of a complete functional organism ap plies as well to the State and to the nation; that the lands of the nation should be studied as to their various fitness to all the purposes which land may serve, and then so regulated that each may best serve that purpose, eco nomic or aesthetic, to which in the general nation-wide scheme it is best fitted.
Some of the most import ant general books on landscape architecture which have influenced the development of the art are Whately, T., 'Observations on Modern Gardening> (1770) ; Hirschfeld, C. C. L., 'Theorie der Gartenkunst) (1775-80) ; Rep ton, H., 'Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening and Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening' (1794 and 1803) • Loudon, J. C., 'An Encyclopmdia of Gardening' (1822) ; Prince von Piickler-Muskau's 'Andeutungen fiber Landschiftsgartnerei) (1834; now available in a recent English translation) ; Down ing, A. J., 'Treatise on the Theory and Prac tice of Landscape Gardening' (1841) ; Andre, E., 'L'Art des Jardins> (1879) Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Schuyler, 'Ar.t out-of-doors> (1893) •, and the biography by his father of 'Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect' (1902). Of recent general works should be mentioned Meyer and Ries, 'Die Gartenkunst in Wort and Bild) (enlarged 1914); Parsons, S., 'Art of Landscape Archi
tecture) (1915), and Hubbard, H. V., and Kim ball, T., 'An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design> (1917). In this last book will be found a selected list of references on landscape architecture, which gives fuller biblio graphical information for all the titles here mentioned and many others, arranged by subject for professional usefulness. The Boston Pub lic Library Catalogue of the Codman Collection of Books on Landscape Gardening (1899) con tains a large number of titles of the older works.
Among the books treating the history of landscape architecture Gothein, M. L., 'Ge schichte der Gartenkunst> (1914) stands out most conspicuously both in comprehensiveness of scope and wealth of source-material con sulted. In English, Triggs, H. I., 'Garden Craft in 'Europe> (1913), and the compilation
The books on the design of estates and gardens are legion, and similarly abundant are descriptions of famous parks and gardens in various parts of the world. The titles of some of these works by such writers as Alphand, Blomfield, Jekyll, Kemp, Mawson, Muthesius, Robinson, Schultze-Naumburg, Sedding, Triggs and others are to be found in the bibliographies already mentioned. Current professional litera ture is noted in the quarterly Landscape Archi tecture (official organ of the American Society of Landscape Architects), which contains arti cles by eminent practitioners, as did the earlier periodical Garden and Forest (1888-97).