Chap. IV.} THE PARC DBS BUTTES UHAUMONT. 



71 



It is sad to reflect tHat an art capable of so much should be, 

 left to the control of persons ignorant of it, often by men belong- 

 ing to other professions, whose education unfits them for such 

 work. Here-, for example, the too-abundant walks and roads, the 

 absurdly stiff tank-like curve and margin to the water, the 

 unnecessary bridges, the restaurant impudently placed in one 

 of the best sites in the park, the badly formed artificial rock, 

 and the other disfigurements of this noble garden are mainly 

 owing to the influence of the engineer element in the direction. 

 The engineer, the architect, even the botanist naturally enough 



Type of Modem French Garden Plan. {Ernouf, 'L'art des jardins.') 



thinks mainly of his own profession, and regards the horticultural 

 portion of his duties as being an affair which may be deputed to 

 any sufficiently pliant creature. But we shall never have 

 beautiful, and in all ways instructive and useful, national gardens 

 so long as we confide their direction to men to whom garden- 

 ing is quite a secondary matter. Unhappily there is too much of 

 the evil result of this seen, not only, here but in all countries. 

 In England we are at present without means to remedy this state 

 of things. While our Eoyal Horticultural Society had still some 

 vigour, it endowed a professorship of botany, but the creation of 



