THE USE OF ROCKS 173 



out serious loss, and their absence is better than their 

 presence if their deportment in the landscape is not all 

 that it should be. 



There is also a purely conservative side to rock-work 

 that deseiTes the most careful attention in laying out 

 and constructing a country place of the smallest dimen- 

 sions (and the smaller it is, the more important), and 

 that is, the preservation, religiously, of rock masses in 

 their natural moss-gro^Mi and water-worn state. 



Every well-placed, interesting stone in a place has a 

 distinct value in the landscape effect of the region that 

 is difficult to overestimate in actual money. It was the 

 realization of this fact that made a gentleman, kno^^^l to 

 the writer, say that he would not have sacrificed a cer- 

 tain great, moss-gro^\Ti boulder, ten feet in diameter, 

 standing on the edge of a spring, for the sum of a thou- 

 sand dollars, if a thousand dollars would have saved it 

 from the sacrilegious hand and dynamite of the cellar- 

 builder. 



