228 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[August, 



Now it may have been that the hindscape gar- 

 deners of the last century, in their strivings to 

 get away from the constraint of the artificial 

 lines so prevalent then in the arrangement of 

 walks and terraces, and high walls which ham- 

 pered and confined the ornamental grounds of 

 those days, were led — more than they were 

 aware, perhaps, — by this universal law which 

 they saw and felt in their conimunings with 

 nature, to adopt the more natural methods of 

 arranging grounds, which a little later on so 

 almost entirely suspended the former style. For 

 a time at least, a line of drive or walk was hardlj- 

 admirable unless it curved. Straight lines were 

 out of fashion. Curves, and cv;rves only, were in 

 YOgue ; and there is enough of evidence to make 

 us believe that this undue preference still exists ; 

 for the landscape gardener of to-day will hardly 

 have practiced his profession a year before he 

 will have come in collision Avith this notion in 

 the minds of some of his clients. They will have 

 a horror of straight lines, as nature was once 

 said to have of a vacuum. They will want all 

 their walks to curve, if only for the sake of 

 curving. He will, of course, know that this is 

 wrong, for he will have learned, among the first 

 axioms of his art, that straight lines still have 

 their place, and that they cannot be laid aside 

 without, at times, violent incongruity; yet he 

 will often find it " hard work " to get this notion 

 safely at a distance. 



And yet, after all, it would not be difficult to 

 prove that, as sometimes applied to the arrange- 

 ment of ornamental grounds, all curves are not 

 lines of beauty. A glance at public grounds 

 within easy distance would convince any prac- 

 tical eye that better arrangements were possible 

 than those which have been made. There seems 

 to have been too great a use of the circular 

 curve. This has its place, of course ; but it is 

 not universally applicable, as in some places 

 seems to have been attempted. It is often stiff, 

 and formal, and hard. It reverses badly, does not 

 always fit well to the surface, and, although 

 these faults may in a measure be modified by 

 skillfully combining different radii, still, there is 

 a degree of artificiality which cannot always be 

 overcome. It has indeed proved so arbitrary 

 and obstinate, that many have discarded the 

 idea of laying out their roads and walks by any 

 known law. They have preferred instead to 

 trust to the eye altogether, and they have often 

 secured better results by doing so than any 

 which the circular curve could give them. And 



when this trusted member (the eye) has failed, 

 other expedients have been called into use. A 

 cart loaded with stones, and drawn by oxen 

 around where the much sought curve w^as 

 wanted, has answered the purpose. Others have 

 made a raid ujoon the nearest drying ground, and 

 brought thence the clothes-line to their aid. 

 But there are difficulties in these methods also, 

 A clothes-line will not always lie exactly in the 

 right place, especially on rough ground, through 

 bushes, or over as yet unremoved stone walls ; 

 and in some cases it would take a large family 

 to supply a clothes-line long enough. And so 

 with the ox-cart. It cannot be regarded as a 

 convenient instrument, nor one always available. 

 It would certainly be troublesome tc) carry one 

 around from place to place, no matter how well 

 trained the oxen ; and some places come back 

 to my memory now over which drives were re- 

 quired to be laid out, where it would have puz- 

 zled the most sure-footed ox to have made his 

 way, nor would the wheels' track have been 

 exactly the curve wanted, even if he had got 

 safely through. 



And to all these methods there is one very 

 strong objection, viz., the difficulty of mapping 

 the grounds after they have been so laid out, or 

 of transferring, in any of these ways, a plan 

 already drawn, to the ground. 



Is there not, then, some method which can be 

 devised to overcome these difficulties? I do not 

 know, but I suspect that " it is always dangerous 

 to assert anything as a rule in matters of art." I 

 have, however, for some years been a good deal 

 helped in this part of my work by the use of a 

 curve, which is very easily laid down either on a 

 plan or on the ground. It is one which is far 

 less stiff and formal than a circular curve, is bet- 

 ter fitted to uneven ground, leaves a tangent 

 line more slowly, and therefore reverses much 

 more gracefully ; and it can be laid off from tan- 

 gents of unequal length, which is often practi- 

 cally of great convenience. This curve is the 

 Parabola. Its name need not alarm any one by 

 its apparent abstruseness ; for, analytically con- 

 sidered, it is one of the simplest of all curves, and 

 a very short acquaintance with its good qualities 

 will convince us that it is a very graceful and 

 obliging one, not willingly to be rejected after a 

 little practice has made obvious its easy appli- 

 cation. 



This is not the place for a mathematical dis- 

 cussion of the parabola. Reference to any ana- 

 lytical geometry will furnish full information of 



