342 The American Flower Garden 



especially beautiful garden picture may be seen. A single broad 

 bowery arch will lead the eye toward a distant vista as surely as a 

 pointed finger. 



An Elizabethan half-timbered house, whose projecting beams 

 are coated with tar and oil, has its wooden lattices that screen the 

 drying ground and its arbour that is overhung with Wichuraiana 

 roses, clematis and wild grape, coated with the same effective tar 

 preservative which, however, cannot be used on seats lest it rub off 

 on one's clothes. The seats for the garden around this house are 

 built of sturdy oak planks left to weather-stain one plank laid 

 across four log uprights forms a seat; another narrower one, joined 

 by large oak dowels to two of the tall upright posts, serves for a 

 back. Although cedar and locust rot less readily than other wood 

 used in gardens, even these are greatly benefited by having the 

 ends of the posts that are sunk in the earth dipped in tar. 



Spar varnish as well as tar oil preserves rustic and wooden 

 work that is exposed to the weather; moreover, it does not conceal 

 the natural colour and grain of the wood and it protects it from 

 borers. 



Not long ago a man, who was brought before a judge for 

 some petty offence, was asked his occupation. 



" Boring worm holes with hot wire in antique furniture, Your 

 Honour," said the prisoner at the bar. 



Worm holes in rustic furniture never increase its value, however, 

 even to the unwary; on the contrary, they may utterly destroy it. 

 The popular hickory chairs and settees for camps, piazzas and 

 rustic summer houses, need varnish especially, for they usually 

 contain occupants other than human. If little piles of sawdust 

 form daily on the floor under the spots where the borers are 

 tunnelling nursery holes for destructive descendants in the 



