PARK TIMBER 257 



should be planted as irregularly and openly as possible. By 

 such means the boundaries or outlines of the clump are 

 effectually obscured, and the opportunity is taken of obtaining 

 the variety due to the alteration of ground level, and at the 

 same time obscuring the ugliness of a tame sky-line. 



As regards the thinning of clumps, it may be said that a 

 clump properly planted is better left unthinned. The chief 

 fault in most clumps is the want of natural grouping, which 

 is more or less prevented by thinning. Leaning stems, 

 several trees springing from the same point, and that forma- 

 tion of composite crowns which results when two or three 

 trees have stood close together from the first, are the most 

 attractive features to be found in park or forest scenery, but 

 which too careful thinning invariably prevents. When 

 planted too thickly or formally at the outset, however, 

 thinning may do much to correct or modify faults in these 

 directions. The object to be aimed at in such work should 

 be that of breaking up the margins where these are too 

 regular in outline or too flat in surface, and by cutting a 

 hole or two here and there, and isolating a marginal group of 

 two or three trees in such a way that they will eventually 

 acquire an easy and natural shape of stem and crown, and 

 disguise the fact as much as possible that artificial thinning 

 has been done. In any case regular thinning should be 

 carefully avoided, and an attempt made to imitate that 

 natural arrangement of self-sown clumps which never proves 

 distasteful or formal. 



THE GROVE. 



The grove is a feature of park scenery which is especially 

 appropriate to large parks which require splitting up into 

 two or three portions. It is often the means of separating 

 the more polished and tidy portions of a park near the 

 mansion from the wilder and more forest-like tracts farther 

 away, and represents the denser parts, which are popularly 

 but erroneously considered to be the only typical portions of 

 a natural forest. This feature of park scenery is more 

 neglected than ought to be the case ; for it undoubtedly 

 affords a pleasant relief to the ordinary tree-dotted turf, which 

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