284 PLANTING IN GROUPS OR IN MIXED PLANTATIONS. 



estimating the arboricultural taste and skill of our city rulers. At 

 the former, you will see avenue trees selected with the utmost dis- 

 regard to their adaptation for the soil and situation ; the kind being 

 the common or \Vych elm — ofie of the most capricious of ordinary 

 forest trees — each with a stem of a few feet, surmounted by a besom- 

 like head of numerous contending branches, as if (should they ever 

 attain to sufficient sizes) for the easy ascent and comfortable accommo- 

 dation of city roughs when viewing passing processions. At the 

 latter, where, according to R Maxwell of Arklancl, Mr Hope of Ean- 

 keillor, commencing about 1722, "raised beautiful hedges and trees, 

 made rich meadows and pleasant walks, where gentlemen and 

 ladies resorted ;" and which, in Campbell's Journey through North 

 Britain, 1810, are described as " a Mall lamentably unlike St James's, 

 being shamefully neglected avenues, where there was no longer 

 pleasure in wandering among broken down hedge-rows and blasted 

 trees;" a description highly applicable to their management up to the 

 present time, as you will see by their general appearance, and 

 especially by that of the murderously mutilated, ill grown, distorted, 

 unsightly avenue of trees which cuts in two the lengthy expanse of 

 grassy meadow, and regarding which so much has of late been said 

 and written. 



