302 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



Lakes or ponds are the most beautiful forms in which 

 water can be displayed in the grounds of a country 

 lesidence.* They invariably produce their most pleasing 

 effects when they are below the level of the house ; as, if 

 above, they are lost to the view, and if placed on a level 

 with the eye, they are seen to much less advantage. We 

 conceive that they should never be introduced where they 

 do not naturally exist, except with the concurrence of the 

 following circumstances. First, a sufficient quantity of 

 running water to maintain at all times an overflow, for 

 nothing can be more unpleasant than a stagnant pool, as 

 nothing is more delightful than pure, clear, limpid water ; 

 and secondly, some natural formation of ground, in which 

 the proposed water can be expanded, that will not only 

 make it appear natural, but diminish, a hundred fold, the 

 expense of formation. 



The finest and most appropriate place to form a lake, is 

 in the bottom of a small valley, rather broad in proportion 

 to its length. The soil there will probably be found rather 

 clayey and retentive of moisture ; and the rill or brook, if 

 not already running through it, could doubtless be easily 

 diverted thither. There, by damming up the lower part 

 of the valley with a head of greater or less height, the water 

 may be thrown back so as to form the whole body of the 

 lake. 



The first subject which will demand the attention, after 

 the spot has been selected for the lake or pond, and the 



* Owing to the immense scale upon which nature displays this fine element 

 in North America, every sheet of water of moderate or small size is almost 

 universally called a pond. And many a beautiful, limpid, natural expanse, 

 which in Eneknd would be thought a charming lake, is here simply a pond. 

 The term may be equally correct, but it is by no means as elegant. 



