LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 299 



works. Study to avoid formality, and make the excavation 

 from two feet on the sides to six, or say five feet in the middk^. 

 If you come upon soft places, go deeper there, in the reason- 

 able hope of coming to springs, for a supply of water is a 

 most important part of the affair. According to the nature 

 of the ground, so must you determine to puddle the bottom 

 and sides, or otherwise. If you are digging in clay it will 

 retain the water, but if in gravel or sand, or loose soil the 

 entire bottom as well as sides will have to be puddled, unless 

 springs come up through the sand, and fill your pond. But it 

 frequently happens that springs will fill your pond up to a 

 certain part, and that the loose ground takes it off there, — in 

 short, that no supply vriM keep it above that mark, which may 

 be a good deal too low for appearance or use. Nothing but 

 puddling can avail us in that case ; and puddling may be 

 explained to be the making of a lining -with well-kneaded 

 clay. If we are obliged to supply the water from other means, 

 it is but to confine the depth to about four or five feet at the 

 deepest part, and two feet on the sides, but of the saucer form 

 of hollow, and then putting well-kneaded clay all over it, and 

 setting men with rammers to beat it, or rather run it out into 

 an equal bottom of about nine inches to a foot in thickness — 

 for well-worked clay is as impervious to Avater as if it were 

 baked — this puddhng is to be worked up the side to the very 

 edge, and it will then retain all the water that is put into it, 

 except what goes off" by evaporation. As, however, lakes 

 must be made at the lowest part of a domain, and all the land 

 around may be drained into it, we are seldom compelled to 

 puddle any more than the sides for a few feet in all round. 

 We should never choose an estate without water, and we 

 should lay out the whole of it, even choosing the site for the 

 house with some reference to a good view of a part, if not the 

 whole of it, though it would enter into our plan to conceal it 

 here and there by planting, to break the line of the edges 

 of it ; for we can conceive notliing more naked than water 

 without wood. 



Fountains. — These belong to the formal portion of garden- 

 ing, but the making of them may be treated of in this place 

 as part of the management of water. We need hardly inform 

 the amateur gardener, that neither fountains nor falls can be 

 produced without a head of water ; and this must be either 

 supplied by the nature of the place, or by force -piunps. If we 



