SckeWs Landscape-Gar deniiig. 267 



As it often happens that these sheets of stagnant water are 

 rendered foul by water plants and other objects, it is necessary, 

 besides the frequent drawing off of the water, to keep a. number 

 of swans, because the water plants serve them for food, which 

 their long necks enable them to bring up from the bottom and 

 thus to extirpate entirely. 



XV. General Observations on the Arrangement of Woods on a large Scale 

 observed by Nature. 



1. Nature has adorned our earth with so many examples of 

 various woods, in so many different situations, and under so 

 many forms, that we can never be at a loss with those fine ex- 

 amples and pictures before us. 



Sometimes she clothes the sides of the mountains with dense 

 forests which the eye cannot penetrate, and where eternal twi- 

 light reigns ; sometimes she only crowns their highest peaks with 

 bold masses of lofty trees, which, veiled in clouds, defy the storm ; 

 sometimes her woods assume the character of sacred groves ; 

 sometimes they appear in distinct masses or in single trees, 

 which serve as a foreground to the landscape ; and she often 

 accompanies streams and brooks with lightly scattered groups 

 of slender alders and willows, and conceals and overshadows their 

 banks with umbrageous and dark forests. She overhangs steep 

 rocks with ivy (//edera i^elix), the virgin's bower (Clematis 

 Vitalba), the honeysuckle (Lonicem Periclymenum and Capri- 

 folium), the bramble and the raspberry (Pubus fruticosus and 

 ida3 v us), with the wild rose (Rosa spinosissima and villosa), with 

 the berberry (Berberis vulgaris), and with many other shrubs: 

 or she produces from the unattainable clefts and fissures of the 

 rocks, at fearful heights and over abrupt precipices, the fir 

 (Pinus A^h'xea), the maple (A^cev jolatanbides and Pseudo-Pla- 

 tanus), the birch (Setula alba), the mountain ash (Morbus 

 aucuparia), the hawthorn (Crataegus AWa), &c, shooting 

 boldly up into the air and clothed in a luxuriant green. But 

 Nature does not plant, she only scatters seeds or causes roots to 

 be developed ; thus she covers districts, miles in length, with 

 oaks, beech, maple, birch, or fir woods, and only prevents a par- 

 ticular sort of tree from spreading further when the situation or 

 soil adapted to it begins to fail, and becomes more favourable 

 for another sort of tree. Thus arise those large masses of wood 

 in nature, which have an expression as bold as it is harmonious, 

 because they are mostly composed of one sort of tree. 



2. Nevertheless, we see in those ancient natural forests which 

 I here allude to, and to which man has not yet applied his 

 art, that when they consist chiefly of oaks or any other sort 

 of tree, other kinds also frequently occupy considerable spaces 

 in their interior, producing the most agreeable contrasts and 



