284 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



latter, will serve to raise the banks when they are too low. 

 It is of but little consequence how rouo^hly and irregularly 

 the projections, elevations, etc., of the banks and outlines are 

 at first made, so that some general form and connection is 

 preserved. The danger lies on the other side, viz : in pro- 

 ducing a whole too tame and insipid, for we have found by 

 experience, how difficult it is to make the best workmen un- 

 derstand how to operate in any other way than in regular 

 curves and right lines. Besides, newly moved earth, by set- 

 tling, and the influence of rains, etc., tends, for some time, 

 towards greater evenness and equality of surface. 



Mr. Price, in his unrivalled instructions for the creation of 

 pieces of artificial water, has suggested another excellent 

 method by which the outlines and banks of lakes, may 

 be varied. This is, first, by cutting down the banks, in 

 some places nearest the water, perpendicularly, and then un- 

 dermining them. This will produce a gradual variation in 

 some parts, which, falling to pieces, will produce new and 

 irregular accidental outlines. When, by the action of rain 

 and frost, added to that of the water itself, large fragments 

 of mould tumble from the hollowed banks of rivers or lakes, 

 these fragments, by the accumulation of other mould, often 

 lose their rude and broken form, are covered with the fresh- 

 est grass, and enriched with tufts of natural flowers ; and 

 though detached from the bank, and upon a lower level, still 

 appear connected with it, and vary its outline in the softest 

 and most pleasing manner. As fragments of the same kind 

 will always be detached from ground that is undermined, so 

 by their means the same effects may designedly be produced ; 

 and they will suggest numberless intricacies and varieties of 

 a soft and pleasing, as well as of a broken kind. 



It will of course be well understood that we have here not 



