THE LADY'S COUNTRY COMPANION. 181 



No. 4, Yellow Crocuses, or White Anemone; No. 5, Scilla verna 

 and sibirica, blue; No. 6, Arabis albida, white; No. 7, Double 

 Pink Hepatica; No. 8, Winter Aconite; No. 9, Purple Crocuses; 

 No. 10, Snowdrops; No. 11, Primroses; No. 12, White Hepatica, 

 or Arabis alpina. 



If you do not like the plan for a garden which I have sent you, 

 you can draw one according to your own fancy, of any figure you 

 like ; but as I believe you have not yet a regular gardener, it will 

 be necessary to teach you how to transfer the plan you have decided 

 upon from the paper to the ground. In the first place the ground 

 must be dug over, raked, and made perfectly smooth. The pattern, 

 if a complicated one, must then be drawn on Berlin paper, which is 

 covered with regular squares, and the ground to be laid out must be 

 covered with similar squares, but larger ; the usual proportion being, 

 that a square inch on the paper represents a square foot on the 

 ground. The squares on the ground are usually formed by sticking 

 in wooden pegs at regular distances, and fastening strings from peg 

 to peg, till the whole ground is covered with a kind of latticework of 

 string. Each string is then chalked, and made to thrill by pulling it 

 up sharply and letting it go again, which transfers the chalk from 

 the string to the ground. When the ground is thus covered with 

 white squares, it is easy to trace upon it, with a sharp-pointed stick, 

 any pattern which may have been drawn on the paper; the portion 

 in each square on the ground being copied on a larger scale from that 

 of the corresponding square on the paper. 



Simple patterns, consisting of straight lines, need only to be mea- 

 sured, and pieces of string stretched from pegs put in at the proper 

 distances, so as to form straight lines, oblongs, squares, triangles, or 

 diamonds. If a circle is to be traced, it is done by getting a piece of 

 string half the length of the diameter of the circle, with a piece of 

 stick tied to each end. One stick is then driven into the ground in 

 the centre of the circle, and a line is traced with the stick at the 

 other extremity of the string, which is drawn out quite tight. An 

 oval is made by tracing two circles, the circumscribing line of one of 

 which just touches the centre of the other; short lines are afterwards 

 made at the top and bottom, and the central lines are obliterated. 

 A square only requires a peg at each corner, with a chalked string 



