ffntrofcuctton 25 



China and Japan have now been acclimated in 

 Europe, and even more successfully in Amer- 

 ica, and the enormous number and variety 

 of trees, shrubs, herbaceous and other plants 

 now added to the resources of gardening call for 

 correspondingly greater learning and training 

 than has ever before been given to the subject, 

 so that an accomplished landscape-artist of 

 to-day is as far beyond the Kents and Le Notres 

 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 

 as they were beyond the topiarius who tortured 

 the trees and shrubs of Pliny and the Caesars. 



Two qualities which usually distinguish pro- 

 fessional from amateur productions in art, 

 namely, simplicity and breadth of treatment, 

 are especially important when applied to the 

 face of nature itself. True, nature will in 

 course of time protect herself from the mis- 

 guided assaults of well meaning amateurs, by 

 covering up or wholly destroying their abortive 

 creations. A trained artist, on the other hand, 

 knows how to assist nature, without resorting 

 too bluntly to the easy device of servile imita- 

 tion. In such work, particularly as now taught 



