LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 45 



formation of the exquisite "lawns" of the New 

 Forest. There the cattle are the landscape gardeners, 

 who, somewhat to the detriment of timber, but to the 

 great advantage of the beauty of the forest, have kept 

 the glades and grass-grown greens from being filled 

 up with bushes, shrubs, and briars. The bite of the 

 hungry cattle has century after century cropped the 

 natural increase of young seedlings level with the 

 earth, while their tread has made the grass compact 

 and close. They have also kept it short and sweet 

 up to the very bases of the columned beeches, whose 

 grey stems rise from the velvet sward set round with 

 violets, primroses, and a thousand tiny leaves and 

 blossoms which never could have flourished but for 

 the light and air which the forest cattle unconsciously 

 secure to them. The open glades and lawns seen at 

 their best in the New Forest are common to all forest 

 land where cattle have long been allowed to pasture. 

 In the clay forests, such as Epping, these lawns are 

 scarce, because the indigenous shrub and undergrowth 

 is thorn, almost the only bush which cattle find too 

 prickly to chew. Pasturing grass-lands with certain 

 kinds of stock induces a different growth of minor 

 vegetation. In the Vale of the White Horse, for 

 example, there are large tracts of meadow-land in 

 which horses should never be turned out. Where 

 they are nettles always grow. The experiment of 

 keeping horses entirely away from these meadows has 

 been tried for many years on a certain large estate, 

 with the result that there is now scarcely a nettle-bed 

 in some five hundred acres of this grass-land. The 



