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470° THE DICTIONARY OF GARDENING, 
Landscape Gardening—continued. 
facilitate the creation of picturesque effects, will have 
to be well studied, as well as the best methods of remedy- 
ing any defects. 
Tracina. The necessary appliances required for 
tracing the design of the future garden or park are an 
optical square, a chain, a rule, a garden line, and some 
sticks and pegs. With the pegs will be marked the 
positions of the buildings, trees, &c., the outlines of 
the alleys, water, and beds, and the heights of the levels 
of the earthwork to be thrown up. Two different kinds 
of pegs will be required: (1) Long poles to indicate the 
positions of the buildings to be erected; (2) Pegs 2tt. 
long, 1din. to 2in. square, thick, and pointed at one end, 
for marking the outlines. The sticks shonld be as 
straight as possible, 3ft. to 4ft. long, with a slight slit 
in the centre of the top. In this should be inserted 
pieces of white paper; these are used for tracing the 
lines of sight and are the bases to work upon in the 
general tracing. 
The outlines of the house have first to be traced as 
exactly as possible, the situation of the principal rooms 
being marked, as according to their disposition the lines 
of yiew will have to be arranged. The greatest number of 
lines of view will be concentrated at the centre of the 
principal front. From these points the gardener must 
start to stake, taking, one after the other, the different 
objects which it is decided to include in the picture—such 
as a church steeple, a ruin, water, rockery, &c. Some- 
times these views may be hidden by trees, through which 
openings will have to be made, or by other obstacles, 
which will likewise have to be overcome. ‘Their positions 
will be found on the plan by taking the angle formed by 
two lines, of which one will mark the future opening, and 
this will then be noted on the ground by the aid of the 
compass. 
The different views and aspects, regarded from other 
parts of the garden or park, must afterwards be fixed 
with exactness. For this purpose the lines used and 
marked on the plan of situation will be reproduced on 
the ground, and with some perpendiculars and angles 
measured and traced from them the gardener will arrive 
at the required situation. The start and the direction 
of the view will then be found. In fixing these lines of 
sight the peculiarity of the angle of sight must be taken 
into consideration. The object to be set in view must 
be seen in all its width: it must not be concentrated 
into a narrow opening; such an opening must be wider 
at its extremity than at its start, close to the point of 
If the view is to be reciprocal—that is, 
observation. 
RR 
Fic. 488. DIAGRAM OF RECIPROCAL VIEW. 
if the two ends become each in turn top and base of 
the triangle—the opening must not be bounded by two 
parallel lines, but must be managed as shown in Fig. 488. 
The outline of a lake, river, &c., must be pleasing, 
and in harmony with the situation. Very often the 
agreeable forms given to creations on paper will have 
to be altered on the ground. It must be remarked here 
that a curve appears much more accentuated when traced 
on the ground. It will be well, after the - principal 
points of the lake have been determined, to join them 
by inserting intermediate pegs at short distances from 
each other, say every 14ft., or every 6ft. when the curves 
are short. 
The tracing of the alleys is most important, as it is in 
fact the reproduction on the ground of the design of the 
garden. The tracing of an avenue or of a str aight alley, 
Landscape Gardening—continued. 
or, indeed, of any other straight line which may oceur 
in the design of a garden, is such an easy operation, 
that it hardly reqnires any description. The extremities 
are fixed, and intermediate pegs inserted upright in the. 
line at “equal distances. The curved lines are more 
difficult to trace. Geometrical curves may be calculated 
and traced with invariable precision, but generally 
speaking they only occur in geometrical or formal gardens, 
or in flower-beds. In the tracing of gardens or parks, 
one has generally to deal with fantastic curves with 
long, sweeping lines, and contra-curves with ever-changing 
centres. Their execution requires great practice, as 
they are traced by sight, without the help of any 
instrument. Their ontlines, so long as they are pleasing, 
do not require to be traced with mathematical precision, 
Though this could be obtained, it wonld entail con- 
siderable trouble and great loss of-time withont giving 
any appreciably better result. 
We will begin by demonstrating the principle employed 
in tracing a regular curve with only one centre, an 
operation which may be done in two different ways. In 
Fic, 489. TRACING A CURVE FROM A FIXED POINT. 
the first, shown at Fig. 489, the worker stands at a, and 
directs the operation without moving from that spot. The 
pegs are set at equal distances, and the apparent 
interval between them increases with the distance from 
the point a. The represented curve is divided into eight 
parts, and the apparent distance between each peg, as 
seen from a, will be respectively cd for ce, ef for eg, gh 
for gi, &c.; that is, the intervals seen between those 
pegs are equal to the lengths of the perpendiculars dc, 
fe, hg, &c., erected on the 
straight lines ac, ae, and 
ag. From the point a, 
situated on an eminence, 
the worker conld see all 
the different points of the 
curve, whereas, if he were 
standing in a hollow of the 
ground, one part would be 
hidden. 
By the second method the 
curye is traced by what is 
known, in French, as 
cheminement, and differs 
from the first in that the 
operator, instead of direct- 
ing the work from one point, 
goes forward as it proceeds. 
It is based on the principle that if the perimeter of a circle 
is divided into equal parts the abscisse are all equal 
to each other. In Fig. 490 the curve is equally divided 
in a, c, e, g, and i; the abscisse of the chords Ac, ae, 
and cg will be equal to ba, as all the ares of the cirele 
are equal to each other. Starting at the point A, the 
operator has the pegs at a and e¢ inserted, and notes 
the length of the abscissa ba, keeping it in mind, 
Going forward to a, he has the peg e inserted, 
reproducing in dc the length of the abscissa ba, and so 
on. Irregular curves, with several centres, are those 
which occur most frequently in tracing a garden; they 
are also traced by cheminement, as just explained. 
Fig. 491 represents a parabolic curve equally divided. 
In working gradually forward from c’ to d’ it will be 
seen that the abscisse e'e, ff, and gg, gradually lengthen, 
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