CHAPTER VII 



^y Special Features 



If a place be separated into its constituent elements, it will 

 be seen to consist not only of a number of objects, but to 

 comprise at least a few individual departments that have 

 features of their own and demand peculiar treatment. 

 Should any of these not be very important in point of extent, 

 much of what is lacking in dimensions may be made up by 

 extreme attention to the disposal and regulation of every 

 part, that if there be no palpable merit there may be perfect 

 freedom from fault. 



I. Fields. — To make anything of a park or field, it must 

 be managed simply as if it were a park, on however diminu- 

 tive a scale. Its size will not materially affect the question of 

 design, for the largest field or park would only contain similar 

 features much more boldly carried out. 



In the arrangement and furnishing of a park the same 

 principles are to be observed as in the treatment of a garden, 

 only in a much rougher and bolder way. There should be 

 breadth of glades, with planting chiefly at the margins, dis- 

 posed in masses or groups, with openings between, and fronted 

 by occasional single specimens. Bareness and baldness will 

 be as faulty as on a lawn. The attempt to save a few yards 

 of ground for pasture, at the expense of all richness of cloth- 

 ing or variety of aspect, will be but a shortsighted policy. 



Around the sides of parks or paddocks, any smaller planta- 

 tions may be composed of a coarser and commoner descrip- 

 tion of plants than those used in the garden, and evergreens 

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