PARK TIMBER 259 



their side branches, in that one-sided and leaning fashion 

 which is the most fertile source of picturesque variety. The 

 surface of groves is always improved by a carpet of bracken, 

 coarse grass, briers, etc., for grazed parks are seldom inclined 

 to become too weedy in this respect. Nettles and thistles 

 should be excluded as much as possible by cutting and 

 spudding, but other forms of wild surface-growth are not out 

 of place, and too great an attempt at tidiness should not be 

 aimed at. 



THE BELT. 



The average belt may be defined as an unsuccessful 

 attempt at deception, for it is little else. To plant a narrow 

 strip of trees along the boundary line of an estate or park, 

 with the expressed intention of disguising that line, is about 

 equivalent to obscuring the presence of a distant object by 

 painting it white. An irregular hedge of shrubs and timber 

 trees, which might be taken for park clumps in one place or a 

 plantation in another, would disguise this line far more 

 effectually than a thin belt of timber trees of equal height, 

 size, and depth of crown, and with a transparent interval 

 between the latter and the ground surface. Yet this latter 

 is the form usually taken by the average belt, and the 

 practised eye can detect it at a glance, and does not require 

 to be told that the land beyond belongs to another owner, 

 and that the belt is there to make him believe otherwise. 



Apart from its lack of success in this direction, the 

 typical belt is positively ugly, owing to its unvarying height 

 and width, lack of depth, and especially so on flat ground. 

 On sloping and undulating ground the general sameness is 

 not so marked, as the streak of daylight disappears, and the 

 rise and fall of the ground causes irregularities in the level 

 of the crowns. But in either case it is absolutely unnecessary, 

 and therefore expensive and superfluous. A few thorns will 

 disguise a fence, and a group or clump will hide buildings, 

 and these are the only objects that require hiding in a general 

 way. Why a distant view should be objected to because it 

 happens to pass over someone else's property, or a picturesque 

 object hidden because it happens to stand on the farther side 



