It is a simple thing to show how to spend money, no talent whatever being required to commit the most wasteful extravagances. In landscape work, the error of extravagance is one most frequently committed, and tends, by example, to prevent many from gratifying their tastes. To illustrate the manner of executing work that shall be more nearly perfect and beautiful, and to do it at the same time with strict economy, is not so easy.

The more perfect one's knowledge is of the various means of producing landscape effects, the less will be the expenditure, for the reason that what he does is systematic and business-like, and he knows precisely the result he intends to accomplish.

There is scarcely a better illustration of misspent time and funds than homemade performances in road-making. He who constructs a road each year, or at irregular periods of his life, scarcely takes the trouble to acquaint himself with any of the scientific principles belonging to road-making, and naturally falls into and repeats the accumulated blunders that have gone before him. Undoubtedly it is a captivating pleasure to do all one's own work, yet it is an unsatisfactory reflection to find that your neighbor has attained far more durable and beautiful results at one half the expense.

Road-making is a scientific pursuit, and to follow it successfully requires a thorough knowledge of its principles. Dr. Lardner says, "I do not know that I could suggest any one problem to be proposed to an engineer which would require a greater exertion of scientific skill and practical knowledge, than laying out a road;" and we doubt if he could have found a man in this country who would not feel grossly insulted if he were told the plain truth, that he is ignorant of the first principles. There is money enough squandered every year in building ornamental roads in an improper manner, that, if judiciously expended, would add materially to the embellishments of a place, instead of being worse than buried a couple of feet below the surface.

The limit of permanence and durability ought to be a study with those who construct roads, instead of adopting the expensive fallacy, that if one foot of broken stone is good, two or three are necessarily better.

The chief characteristic of a good road, aside from beauty of location and alignment, are smoothness, hardness, and permanence, and the most desirable of all is to get these with the most economy of means; the true way to do which is to adopt at once those principles which long years of scientific investigation and experiments have proved to be good.

The true location of an ornamental road would be in graceful flowing lines, the grade of which should be distributed uniformly throughout its length.. Its position should be such that no more surface water than falls on it should flow over it; it must not be the channel towards which, and through which the surface water of adjoining and higher land will flow. One of the most important con-sideratiotis, after a well-studied location, is thorough drainage wherever it is required. The earth bed should be dry and firm, and prepared to the same degree of convexity that is intended for the finished surface. The depth of the excavation for the road metal need not exceed six inches as an average; it will, however, in adjusting the grades, be more in some places and less in others; but the whole thickness of road metal, including the binding, need not under any circumstances be over six inches.

There are two well-known methods of constructing broken-stone roads, those of Telford and McAdani; the former having a rough pavement of stones well wedged or chinked down so that they can not move, and covered with a layer of broken stone, 2 1/2 inches cube, and finished with a blending material of good, clean gravel 1 1/2 inches in depth. The McAdam plan is to have all the stone broken to 2 1/2 inches cube, put on in three layers, each of which is to be worked in by use, and finally becoming consolidated into a firm, compact, impenetrable body, without the aid of any other material.

Of late years a third plan of making broken-stone roads has been introduced by Mr. Bayldon, an English engineer of high repute. It embraces portions of the Telford and McAdam plan, with some admirable improvements. It consists of putting on the broken stone, 2 1/4 inches cube, in a single body, rolling it thoroughly; then 1 1/2 inches of blending material, either gravel, ashes, fine chippings of tough stone, scoria, or furnace cinders, and thus opening at once to the traveling public a finished road, instead of compelling them to consolidate a mass of broken stone, as in the McAdam plan.

The Telford and Bayldon systems are the only two that should be used for metaling an ornamental road, the McAdam system being objectionable from the length of time required to compact the mass, and from the fine dust ground from the stone to aid the process of consolidation.

We have stated that six inches of broken stone are sufficient for an ornamental road; but if the Telford plan is used it may have to be a little thicker; not necessarily so, but for more convenience in laying it In a road of this thickness, the only trouble will be with the frost; if the ground be well drained, and the road well rolled when the frost comes out, no harm will be done. On public highways sustaining a continuous stream of trade and travel, four and six-horse loaded teams, and rapidly driven post coaches, the average thickness of the Telford road was 11 inches. Mr. McAdam considers 10 inches sufficient to carry the heaviest traffic, while on the Leeds and Wakefield Turnpike, in England, in 1841, which was constructed on the Bayldon system, the entire thickness was 7 inches, and in 1857 was in full use and good repair, although worn down to an average depth of 3 1/2 inches, in some places being only 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick.

For an ornamental road, or, in fact, for any other, we give our preference to the Bayldon system. We believe, all things considered, that it is the cheapest and most durable road; that the expense of breaking up the stone is less than the extra hauling and labor of laying the Telford pavement; and that it presents the simplest form of construction, so plain that any one from working drawings and specifications could make a road.

Now this doctrine of using a thin layer of materials, properly and scientifically put together, and which has been thoroughly tested and established for from 30 to 50 years, is universally scouted among builders of ornamental roads, and we suppose for the reason that it is human nature to deride or break down that which we can not understand, or which is at variance with preconceived notions.

We have within a week had occasion to examine ornamental roads, on which the labor of excavating from eighteen inches to two feet in depth, and the hauling alone of the materials to fill it up, have actually cost more money than an accomplished engineer would require to build a first-class road, one that will outlast two generations, and pay for itself twice over in the saving of repairs.

The prevalent manner of constructing broken stone ornamental roads is utterly devoid of any thing like skill or principle. A mass of stones of all sizes, from a foot to eighteen inches in depth, covered with about six inches of gravel, is the whole story; and on the principle that two wrongs make one right, the open stone work is to drain the gravel, and the gravel is to prevent the stones from rising to the surface. Such roads never become consolidated; the efforts of the larger stones to rise on top, keeps the road always open, and requires constant attention, while a properly constructed road grows better by use, and soon unites into a compact solid body, through which weeds can not grow, and which can be kept in a neat and polished order with the lightest care.

[There are probably as many failures and as much money foolishly wasted in the construction of ornamental roads, as in any other one thing connected with landscape improvement. We do not think Mr. Woodward has put the case one bit too strong. Nine out of ten men think they can build their own roads, and this is the reason why nine out of ten roads are such wretchedly poor things; besides, these poor roads very often cost twice as much as a good one. The plea usually is, "Oh, I can't afford to pay a professional man to make my roads;" when, in fact, a professional man would often save half the expense; we mean, of course, a man who understands his business. - Ed].