130 Landscape Gardening 



much afflicted with gales from the northwest or storms from 

 the southwest, and will need protecting accordingl}/ . 



Many modes of supplying shelter exist, which are more or 

 less adapted to local peculiarities. Hedges, fences of various 

 sorts, walls, buildings, mounds of earth, or plantations, may 

 all be good in certain situations, and in reference to special 

 objects. It is important, however, to bear in mind that any- 

 thing hard and dense, such as walls and close fences, only 

 serves to divert and increase the current of the wind, directing 

 it with greater force to some point beyond, so that these 

 things simply afford shelter to objects immediately behind 

 them, and do injury to such as are not within the range of 

 their protection. It will be easily observable how severely 

 any plants that happen to grow a little higher than a pro- 

 tecting wall are cut by the power of the wind, and to a far 

 greater extent than such as have been entirely unsheltered. 



It follows then that comparatively open and meshy and 

 intricately branching materials, such as masses of trees and 

 shrubs, are the best means of shelter for an area that is more 

 than a few yards across, as they subdue and in a manner 

 entangle the currents of wind. This is much on the same 

 principle as that by which modern breakwaters act. It is 

 now a well-settled fact that the strongest stone walls are less 

 durable and influential against a heavy sea than an irregularly 

 webby or cellular mass of wood or iron, into which the waves 

 can play, and by which their force is so divided and broken 

 as to become soon exhausted. This diffusion and the multi- 

 plicity of parts in the resisting material renders it much more 

 potent. 



Currents of air, which are very similar to currents of water, 

 may be best broken by trees in the same way, only the parts 

 of trees and shrubs being more minute and numerous, they 

 effect the object of shelter even better than any breakwater 



