THE RENOVATION OF OLD PLACES. 241 



from which the trees can be seen, or their beauty is of no avail. 

 A dense forest around a home suggests the rudeness of pioneer 

 life, not the refinement of culture. Forests breed timber, not 

 sylvan beauty. It is the pasture-field, the park, and the brook- 

 space, that give sun and scope and moisture to develop the sylvan 

 pictures that painters love. Therefore in renovating over-grown 

 places, bear in mind that the cutting away of some of your old 

 trees may be necessary to reveal and improve the beauty of the 

 others. 



Another and different fault of many old places, resulting from 

 the effort of uneducated planters to avoid the error of over-crowd- 

 ing trees and shrubs, is that of distributing them sparsely but 

 pretty evenly all over the place. This is destructive of all picture- 

 like effects, for it gives neither fine groups, nor open lawn ; and even 

 the single trees, however fine they may be, cannot be seen to 

 advantage, because there are no openings large enough to see them 

 from. This must be remedied by clearing out in some places and 

 filling-in in others. 



There is one value in the possession of thrifty saplings of sorts 

 not especially desirable, that few persons know, and which is very 

 rarely made use of. We refer to their usefulness as stocks upon 

 which to graft finer varieties, and by the greater strength of their 

 well-established roots producing a growth of the inserted sorts 

 much more luxuriant and showy than could be obtained in twice 

 the time by fresh plantings. The black oak is not worth preserv- 

 ing, unless of large size, but it can be readily grafted with the 

 scarlet oak. White oaks in superfluous number may be grafted 

 with the rare weeping oaks of England, or the Japan purple oak, or 

 some of the peculiar varieties of the Turkey oak. The common 

 chestnut {castaned) may be grafted with ornamental varieties of the 

 Spanish chestnut ; the common horse-chestnut or buckeye with a 

 number of beautiful and singular varieties ; the common " thorn 

 apple " of the woods with exquisite varieties of the English haw- 

 thorns; and the same with maples, elms, and all those trees of which 

 grafts of novel varieties of the same species may be procured. 

 Scions of rare varieties may be procured at our leading nurseries, 

 or by sending through our seedsmen or nurserymen to England or 

 i6 



