HINDRANCES AND HELPS 



zagging, as it were in easy curves, is uncon- 

 sciously laying down — though not a graceful 

 man — a very graceful line of march. And it 

 is the delicate interpretation of these every-day 

 deflexities, and this instinctive tortuousness (if 

 I may so say), which supplies, or should 

 supply, the landscape gardeners with their best 

 formulae. 



There is no liver in the country so practical, 

 or of so humble estate, but he will have his 

 half dozen paths divergent from his door; and 

 these he may keep dry, and in always service- 

 able condition, by simply removing the soil 

 from them to the depth of eighteen or twenty 

 inches, and burying in them the scattered 

 stones and debris, which are feeding weed- 

 crops in idle corners ; he will thus relieve him- 

 self of the useless material that might cumber 

 the highway, besides possessing himself of the 

 greater part of the top soil removed, for ad- 

 mixture with his composts. And this substitu- 

 tion may progress, season by season; as the 

 garden rakings or refuse material accumulate, 

 he has only to remove a few cubic yards of 

 earth from his paths, bury the waste, and re- 

 serve the more available portions of the mould. 



The same rules of construction are good for 

 all road-ways, more especially for the farmer 



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