1 8 Pros and Cons 



We have referred to the lie of the rocks to the bank 

 and dwelt on its advantages. Occasionally the exact 

 opposite is seen, where in stratified rocks the natural 

 lie has been disturbed. In its worn and sometimes 

 polished surface, the absence of cumulative grit or 

 dSbris, we get great teaching value also — a direct 

 example of what not to do. We also see like instances 

 in many a garden where the rocks constitute a shoot 

 directing all moisture away from the roots of the 

 plants. Rocks having an inclination down the bank 

 are to the gardener impossibles ; they gather to them- 

 selves neither soil nor dibris; dew and rain are speedily 

 carried away, and, save for some long trailing subject, 

 would remain indefinitely unfurnished. Equally bad 

 and wrong, too, in a gardening sense, are overhanging 

 rocks, those more particularly which roof over the 

 plants, rendering the soil dust dry and unfit to the great 

 mass of vegetable life. A few subjects may endure for 

 a time in such places; but it is painful to see them. 

 Quite wrongly placed, too, is the rock whose basal part 

 is fully exposed. Frequently in Nature: this is hidden 

 from view, and soil and grit associating itself therewith 

 would constitute an ideal spot for colonising the 

 choicer plants. Here, indeed, the operator may copy 

 Nature to the full, and in so doing will never err. The 

 foregoing include some of the most valuable object 

 lessons of our own hillsides, and from this stand- 

 point are well worth committing to the tablets of the 

 brain. 



The Disposition or Arrangement of the Bocks is a 

 matter of great importance, though impossible to dis- 

 cuss in detail. In principle, however, it is so nearly 

 akin to "the best teachings of Nature" that probably 

 the reader will have already grasped its import. We 

 have seen how, in the main, the rock should he to the 

 bank, there to be in direct touch with an assured depth 

 of soil uninfluenced by external conditions of dryness. 

 The prevailing idea of the rock-builder should be that 

 he is setting a certain rock or forming a given colony 



