264 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



iently used in philosophical discussion. I should prefer a 

 term which is more specific, and had not been generalized 

 into unmeaningness by universal bad use. The term used 

 should express a combination of all the properties and char- 

 acteristics of a wild scene, divested of its inconveniences and 

 of everything that interferes with the growth and develop- 

 ment of all those plants which nature is struggling to produce, 

 from the minutest moss or lichen, to the tall pine or the 

 wide-spreading oak. Just so far as we improve the develop- 

 ment of the indigenous plants and animals, without derang- 

 ing their natural proportions and relations to one another, do 

 we improve nature without destroying her characteristics. 

 Nature, when left to herself, admits of an excessive crowding 

 of species : and it is only in occasional situations that she is 

 enabled to afford any one tree or other plant its full propor- 

 tions. 



Though it might be averred that a scene is more natural 

 in which everything has grown up with these imperfections, 

 we might with the same propriety contend that the dense 

 and stived population of a crowded city, only half devel- 

 oped in their physical proportions from the want of light and 

 fresh air, are more natural than the well developed inhabitants 

 of the country. It seems to me that we may denaturalize 

 a place in the two following ways : — either by depriving it of 

 some of the individual species and groups that belong to it ; 

 or by arranging them in an order that can only be attained by 

 art. Nature has made certain groups to harmonize with one 

 another, and to depend on each other : and if we disturb 

 these relations we do violence to her system. And though 

 there may be certain noxious plants and animals which must 

 for our own safety and comfort be extirpated, the offence we 

 thereby commit against the order of nature is a necessary de- 

 viation from a general principle. 



The English artists in landscape, and their followers, have 

 omitted to take all these things into consideration, and have 

 believed themselves copyists of nature, when they have sim- 

 ply imitated her irregularities, in the arrangement of the dif- 

 ferent objects iu their grounds, while they omit to copy her 



