LANDSCAPE CHARACTERS 69 



to keep the area entirely in grass, such trees and shrubs have found 

 their way in as can protect themselves against the browsing cattle. 

 In New England these plants are noticeably the thorny and bitter 

 things like wild rose and barberry and juniper and red cedar; and 

 perhaps hawthorns, wild apples, and other hardy trees. First in this 

 invasion by the forest come the roses and the red cedars, which the cattle 

 can hardly browse upon at all. When a thicket of such material has 

 established itself, other plants like shad-bush or hawthorn will grow 

 in the midst of it, protected by it from the cattle ; or at times plants 

 like wild apples will spring up in the open, and though eaten down 

 every year will gradually grow into so wide a mass that finally from 

 its center, out of reach of the cattle, a vertical stem will start and bear 

 a head of foliage, so producing a series of conical and afterwards vase- 

 like forms. This particular group of circumstances, in which man's 

 activity is a factor, results in an automatic choice of the plant materials 

 in the composition and a consequent production of repeated and fairly 

 definite plant forms, enframing and diversifying what remains of the 

 pasture, giving a definite and recognizable landscape character, and 

 often great pictorial beauty. The pastures most neglected are those 

 outlying on the higher slopes of the hills, and so the typical bushy pas- 

 ture which the name calls to mind lies high above the orchards and mead- 

 ows of the valley, framed by the oak and birch and maple of the "wood 

 lot," scattered with outcropping lichened ledges warm in the sun, and 

 patches of sweet-scented fern, and hardback and brambles concealing the 

 old stone walls, — a landscape plainly once the work of man, but so far 

 received back by nature that man's interference is no longer an incon- 

 gruity, but rather an added pleasure of association. (See Plate 9.) 



The English pastoral landscape, like the New England pasture, English 

 had its origin in the clearing of land for economic use, but the land P^^^or^^ 

 was thereafter thoroughly kept up and made as efficient as possible for 

 a pasture, old large trees being preserved, or new trees being planted, 

 singly or in groups, scattered throughout the rich grassland, to furnish 

 shade for the animals. The foliage of these trees which is within the 

 reach of browsing cattle is very usually destroyed by them, and thus is 

 produced a "browsing line" parallel to the undulating ground surface, 

 a unifying element in the composition, in a sense unnatural but not 



