506 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



myself. I had ratlier have a bare and open pasture than such a 

 yard as that shown in Fig. 150, even though it contained the 

 choicest plants of every land. The pasture would at least be 

 plain and restful and unpretentious. It would be nature-like and 

 sweet. But the yard would be full of effort and fidget. 



Eeduced to a single expression, all this means that the greatest 

 artistic value in shrubbery lies in the effect of the mass, and not 

 in the individual shrub. A mass has the greater value because 

 it presents a much greater range and variety of forms, colors, 

 shades and textures, because it has sufficient extent or dimen- 

 sions to add structural character to a place, and because its fea- 

 tures are so continuous and so well blended that the mind is 

 not distracted by incidental and irrelevant ideas. A couple of 

 pictures will admirably illustrate all this. Fig. 152 is a picture 

 of a natural copse. It stretches across a vale, and makes a lawn 

 of the bit of meadow which lies in front of it. The landscape 

 has become so small and so well defined by this bank of verdure 

 that it has a familiar and personal feeling. The great, bare, open 

 meadows are too ill-defiued and too extended to give any domestic 

 air; but here is a portion of the meadow set off into an area which 

 one can compass with his affections. 



This mass in Fig. 152 has its own intrinsic merits, as well as 

 its office in defining a bit of nature. One is attracted by the 

 carelessness of its arrangement, the irregularity of its sky line, 

 the bold bays and promontories, and the infinite play of light and 

 shade. The observer is interested in it because it has character, 

 or features which no other mass in all the world possesses. He 

 knows that the birds build their nests in it, and the rabbits find 

 it a happy covert. 



Now let the reader turn to Fig. 153, which is a picture of an 

 " improved " city yard. Here there is no structural strength to 

 the planting, no defining of the area, no continuous flow of the 

 form and color. Every bush is what every other one is or may 

 be, and there are hundreds like them in the same town. The 

 birds shun them. Only the bugs find any happiness in them. 

 The place has no fundamental design or idea, no lawn upon which 

 a picture can be constructed. 



