io8 The Art of Landscape Gardening 



Robert Marsham, Esq., of Stratton. Instead of firs sur- 

 rounded by a mud bank, he placed deciduous trees of 

 every kind, but especially birch, intermixed with thorns, 

 crabs, and old hollies, cutting off their heads and all their 

 branches about eight feet from the ground : these are 

 planted in a puddle and the earth laid round their roots 

 in small hillocks, which prevent the cattle from standing 

 very near to rub them ; and thus I have seen groups of 

 trees which looked like bare poles the first year, in a 

 very short time become beautiful ornaments to a dreary 

 waste. 



Mr. Gilpin, in his " Forest Scenery," has given some 

 specimens of the outlines of a wood, one of which is not 

 unlike that beautiful screen which bounds the park to the 

 north of Milton Abbey, and which the first of the an- 

 nexed sketches [Plate xi] more accurately represents. 

 We have here a very pleasing and varied line formed 

 by the tops of trees, but, from the distance at which 

 they are viewed, they seem to stand on one straight 

 base-line, although many of the trees are separated from 

 the others by a considerable distance: the upper out- 

 line of this screen is so happily varied that the eye is 

 not offended by the straight line at its base. But there 

 is another line which is apt to create disgust in flat situ- 

 ations, and for this reason — all trees unprotected from 

 cattle will be stripped of their foliage to a certain 

 height, and where the surface of the ground is perfectly 

 flat and forms one straight line, the stems of trees thus 

 brought to view by the browsing of cattle will present 

 another straight line parallel to the ground, at about six 

 feet high, which I shall call the browsing-line. 



Whether trees be planted near the eye or at a distance 

 from it, and whether they be very young plants or of the 



