THE USE OF ROCKS 



THE charm of rocks in a landscape is so evidently 

 valuable that there is a natural desire to use 

 them in lawns and gardens. But experience 

 teaches us that their use is fraught with much difficulty ; 

 and for the very reason that rocks are such positive- 

 looking objects, they should be grouped and massed with 

 the utmost taste and discretion, otherwise the result 

 is sure to mar the landscape, and in so disagreeable a 

 way as could not seem possible at first sight. And here, 

 as elsewhere, we find again that existing facts and con- 

 ditions must be allowed to inspire us. Surrounding ter- 

 ritory may not show the slightest suggestion of out- 

 cropping rock or loose boulders, and in such cases we 

 need surely feel no desire to introduce a foreign element 

 in the scene which can hardly fail to make it discordant. 

 One rock in the wrong place, looking as if it had fallen 

 unawares out of a cart, is totally out of place, while a 

 number of rocks, spotted about in quite promiscuous 

 fashion at the base of a slope abounding in large and 

 small masses of stone, will often help the beauty of the 

 landscape, especially if a footpath is present that ap- 

 pears to be here and there deflected by the presence of 

 the rock. 



