130 PARKS AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS. 



facilitate drainage^ and to suit the conveniences of tillage. 

 The normal type of the agricultural field is a square or 

 parallelogram; but these forms can scarcely be intro- 

 duced into the park^ at least visibly, without a wretched 

 effect. Many parks are subdivided by such a multiplicity 

 of hedges and walls as to deprive them of all apparent con- 

 tinuity of sui'face, and therefore of that unity which is 

 always so desirable. We have often seen the contour of 

 a small hill destroyed by a hedge planted along its top, 

 the slope of a fine bank interrupted by a wall run up 

 or across its breast, or what is perhaps even worse, the 

 bottom of a small and beautiful valley crossed and re- 

 crossed by hedge and ditch or dry stone wall, to the 

 utter destruction of the natm^al beauty of the locality. 

 Clearly the internal fences of the park should be so 

 arranged as to avoid these barbarously mutilating divi- 

 sions of surfaces. Indeed, could the woods be reared for 

 the first forty or fifty years without fences, there might 

 be an almost total absence of that formality and inter- 

 ference with contour so common in most parks; and 

 there would be much more of that free irregularity of 

 outline which is so characteristic a feature in the group- 

 ing of the natural forest. But as we have already said, 

 internal fences in the park cannot be dispensed with : 

 yet in relation to the general scenery they should be 

 regarded as necessary evils, and those forms and distri- 

 butions of them should be preferred which are least con- 

 spicuous and obtrusive. Lines should be adopted which 

 accommodate themselves to the form of the ground, or 

 which may be most easily masked or relieved with scat- 

 tered trees. With these objects in view, the enclosures 

 of the woods and clumps may be made to form a 

 considerable portion of the divisional fences of the park. 



