260 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



For planting in lawns of limited extent the hawthorn 

 is one of the best trees ; it does not grow large, and overtop 

 and shadow other shrubs or plants, but forms a low and fine 

 head, loaded with flowers throughout the spring and garland- 

 ed with fruit even into winter. 



" In pearls and rubies rich the liawthorns show, 

 While through the ice the crimson berries glow." 



One word as to their culture. Though naturally springing 

 up in thin and rather poor soils, they love a good rich mellow 

 earth, naturally dry. They will not flourish in a wet situa- 

 tion : there they soon get mossy and stunted, and assume a 

 decrepid habit. Planted in a good soil, well cultivated and 

 liberally enriched, they soon form fine large branching heads, 

 and display their flowers in a profusion more lavish than any 

 other tree. 



ON THE TERM "NATURAL" AS APPLIED TO LANDSCAPE. 



BY WILSON FLAGG. 



I HAVE already treated this subject, somewhat briefly, in a 

 former number of this Journal. In that essay I merely sug- 

 gested a few hints in relation to certain general laws by which 

 nature is governed in the grouping of plants and the devel- 

 opment of their forms. As it is highly important to under- 

 stand these laws, if we would avoid doing injury to the land- 

 scapes we attempt to improve, I shall make them the subject 

 of further discussion and inquiry. It is often denied that one 

 scene is any more natural than another, if they are each the 

 growth of nature. An orchard, say these objectors, is just as 

 natural as a wild forest, and a garden of tulips as natural as a 

 tract of wild pasture, thickly overgrown with indigenous 

 herbs, flowers and shrubbery. Though it cannot be denied 

 that one is the production of nature as well as the other, yet 

 the former deviates more widely from the process, the direc- 

 tion and the forms of vegetation which nature causes to ap- 

 pear on the face of the earth, when she is left to her own 

 spontaneous eflE'orts. 



