plantations 213 



ence is that there will be then a conscious recognition of 

 the truth, whereas in the many cases that have already 

 happened in the past, the best kind of such landscape 

 work has been done on instinctively right lines. The 

 best work is usually done by a man who cannot tell you 

 why he did it. 



The experience of thinning out forest trees in connec- 

 tion with a park or country place will teach many things 

 if it is done seriously. Most people do not carry it on 

 seriously. It is really almost as difficult an undertak- 

 ing as to create a new place. It will be found that all 

 the above ideas enunciated should be controlling in the 

 management of this work, and its combination with new 

 planting is the most difficult task of all. Thomas 

 Whately gives the following advice, which is good as 

 far as it goes but it does not go quite far enough : 



" It is not however foreign to the subject to observe, 

 that the effects that have been recommended may 

 sometimes be produced by wood alone, without any 

 alteration in the ground itself: a tedious continued 

 line may by such means be broken ; it is usual for this 

 purpose to place several little clumps along a brow ; 

 but if they are small and numerous the artifice is weak 

 and apparent : an equal number of trees collected into 

 one or two large masses, and dividing the line into 

 very unequal parts is less suspicious, and obliterates 

 the idea of sameness with more certainty. When 

 several similar lines are seen together, if one be 

 planted, and the other bare, they become contrasts to 



