254 THE MAGAZINE Or HORTICULTURE. 



the character of the ground to that of the scene it belongs to. 

 Striking effects, forcible impressions, whatever seems to re- 

 quire effort, disturb the enjoyment of a scene intended only 

 to amuse and to please. Sameness is dull ; the purest sim- 

 plicity can at most render a place composed of large parts 

 placid ; the sublimest ideas only make it striking ; it is al- 

 ways grave ; to enliven it, numbers are wanting. But ground 

 is seldom beautiful or natural without variety, or even with- 

 out contrast. Variety is always desirable where it can be 

 introduced. An undulating line composed of parts all elegant 

 in themselves, all judiciously contrasted and happily united, 

 but equal to one another, is far from the line of beauty. A 

 long strait line has no variety at all ; and a little deviation 

 into a curve is but a trifling amendment. 



Of Wood. — Trees and shrubs are of different shapes, 

 greens, and growths. Some thick with branches and foliage, 

 and have almost an appearance of solidity, as the beech and 

 the lime. Others, thin of boughs and of leaves, seem light 

 and airy, as the ash and the poplar. 



They may again be divided into those whose branches 

 begin from the ground, and those which shoot zip into a stein 

 before their branches begin. Of those whose branches begin 

 from the ground, some rise in a conical figure, as the larch 

 and the holly ; some swell out in the middle of their growth, 

 and diminish at both ends, as the mountain ash and the lilac ; 

 some are irregular and bushy from the top to the bottom, as 

 the Red cedar and the Guelder rose. 



Some have their base large and others small, forming slen- 

 der cones or broad cones, according to the width of their base. 

 The branches of some grow horizontally, as the oak ; in 

 others they tend upwards, as in willows; in others ihey fall, 

 as in the acacia ; in others incline obliquely, as in many of 

 the firs ; in others they hang directly down, as in the weep- 

 ing willow. These, continues the author, are the most ob- 

 vious distinctions in the shapes of trees and shrubs. The 

 difference between their shades of green are not so consider- 

 able. 



Some are of a dark green, as the horse chestnut and the 



