LANDSCAPE COMPOSITION 117 



a stone balustrade with painted tin, or painting windows on the 

 blank wall of a house, to such effects as concealing the end of an 

 artificial lake or stream that it may appear to have greater extent, 

 or constructing a pool of semi-elliptical shape that it may appear in a 

 certain aspect semi-circular.* Illusions, being the result of a false 

 deduction by the observer from the given premises, become increasingly 

 easy to bring about as the deduction is complicated and indirect. Tex- 

 ture being very directly perceived is not readily made to appear other 

 than it really is. The color of one object can be, to be sure, modified 

 in its appearance by the juxtaposition of other colors, but, in the main, 

 color in itself, like texture and for the same reason, does not lend itself 

 to illusion. Three-dimensional shape, however, which requires for its 

 perception a more complicated process, can often be used to produce an 

 effect upon the observer which would not at all be borne out by the actual 

 facts on more careful examination ; and in matters of association — a 

 still more complicated and in some ways less predictable mental re- 

 action — the observer may often still more readily be induced to 

 come to incorrect conclusions. 



The first test of a successful illusion is of course that it is not dis- 

 covered. The effect on the observer Is then exactly as though he had 

 actually seen what he thinks he sees. The discovery of the illusion, 

 however, will in certain cases give him intellectual displeasure which 

 will more than offset whatever esthetic pleasure he may have had from 

 the undiscovered deceit. This intellectual displeasure arises in those 

 cases where an object supposed to be of some appropriate material is 

 discovered to be of an inappropriate material, as where a supposed 

 bronze statue decorating a garden is found to be of painted plaster. 

 The displeasure arises also where a form apparently serving some func- 

 tion proves to be incapable of serving it, as for instance where what 

 looks like a gateway at the end of a path proves to offer no means of 

 entrance, or where what is supposed to be a wall of a garden house 

 proves to be merely a bit of stage scenery with no building behind it. 

 In both these cases, the intellectual displeasure of the observer comes 



*In connection with this section, read Note-taking in Italian Gardens. Villa 

 Gamberaia, by H. V. Hubbard, in Landscape Architecture, Jan. 1915, v. 5, p, 57-66, 

 with plans and drawings. 



