LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 181 



do not mean to say that diagrams and surveyor's 

 maps may be positively necessary, provided the 

 director of the improvements has a clear understand- 

 ing of the boundaries and surface, and a clear under- 

 standing of the effects he wishes to accomplish. I 

 only insist that promiscuous planting, and the laying 

 down of paths, little by little, or year by year, with- 

 out reference, clear and constant, to the final results, 

 and to a plan that shall embrace the whole property, 

 will involve great waste of labor, and the inevitable 

 undoing in the future of what may be done to-day. 

 Of course, where such work is intrusted to a corps 

 of gardeners and laborers, complete diagrams will be 

 necessary ; and it is only where the constant personal 

 supervision of the director, whether proprietor or 

 other, can be counted on, that such detailed exhibit 

 of the work in hand can be dispensed with. No 

 general plan, such as I refer to, can be safely matured 

 without, first, full and intimate knowledge of the 

 ground and its environs, and, second, a clear under- 

 standing of the intentions and tastes of the proprietor 

 under whose occupancy the plan is to reach fulfil- 

 ment. 



I do not at all mean to say that the laws of taste 

 in respect to landscape art are to meet revision 

 at the will of any chance proprietor, or that the art 

 itself has not its elemental principles which no occu- 



