446 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



twelve feet wide and six feet deep, it would be easy 

 enough to predict the result at the end of five or six 

 years. Besides which it is a very simple matter to know 

 the effect certain trees or certain groups of trees are 

 going to produce by setting up a few stakes, which 

 shall cover the same extent of ground; and it is a 

 very easy matter to move these groups of stakes until 

 they are rightly and properly placed beyond any ques- 

 tion, and then to proceed with our planting. By con- 

 tinuing in this way with all our planting we may, as 

 we have shown elsewhere, get every thing placed, with- 

 out the possibility of error. 



It is impossible to do this in a wood. We cannot 

 carve out the views and the groups and masses, exactly 

 as we wish, because we cannot find the trees always 

 ready to assist us. It often happens that the finest tree is 

 just where we should prefer to have none ; and where 

 we want density and bulk to hide unsightly objects, we 

 have naked poles of fifty feet, with ten feet of brush 

 up in the sky instead of where it should be, on the ground. 

 There is no remedy in such cases but to cut down our 

 fine tree or abandon the view it hides, and also to cut 

 down our unavailable giants and to plant in their places. 

 We are, in this instance, not as well off as our friend 

 without trees, because we have to do all that he does 

 with the additional labor of grubbing up the old stumps 

 and. renewing the soil before planting. There are, to 

 be sure, instances as we have mentioned in our own 

 case above, where we can make the native forest avail- 

 able by topping those trees which will admit it, and by 

 planting among and in front of them ; but even this, 

 for many years, is not satisfactory. The dignity of the 

 original trees, if any dignity is left, is much injured and 

 frittered away by being side by side with our newly 

 planted Norway s and hemlocks of only three feet in 

 height ; while our own trees, which, in a few years at 

 least, would make their mark where no comparisons 



