ON WOOD AND PLANTATIONS. 77 



awkwardly planted, it is exceedingly difficult to give it a 

 natural and agreeable air ; while many a tame level, with 

 scarcely a glimpse of distance, has been rendered lovely 

 by its charming groups of trees. How necessary, therefore, 

 is it, in the very outset, that the novice, before he begins 

 to plant, should know how to arrange a tasteful group ! 



Nothing, at first thought, would appear easier than to 

 arrange a few trees in the form of a natural and beautiful 

 group, and nothing really is easier to the practised hand, 

 Yet experience has taught us that the generality of persons, 

 in commencing their first essays in ornamental planting, 

 almost invariably crowd their trees into a close, regular 

 clump, which has a most formal and unsightly appearance, 

 as different as possible from the easy, flowing outline of 

 the group. 



" Natural groups are full of openings and hollows, of 

 trees advancing before, or retiring behind each other ; 

 all productive of intricacy, of variety, of deep shadows 

 and brilliant lights." 



The chief care, then, which is necessary in the forma 

 tion of groups, is, not to place them in any regular or 

 artificial manner, as one at each corner of a triangle, 

 square, octagon, or other many-sided figure ; but so to 

 dispose them, as that the whole may exhibit the variety, 

 connexion, and intricacy seen in nature. " The greatest 

 beauty of a group of trees," says Loudon, "as far as 

 respects their stems, is in the varied direction these take 

 as they grow into trees ; but as that is, for all practical 

 purposes, beyond the influence of art, all we can do, is to 

 vary as much as possible the ground plan of groups, or 

 the relative positions which the stems have to each other 

 where they spring from the earth. This is considerable. 



