232 



THE planter's guide. 



When a man, however, has planted his lawn with trees 

 like his thumb, or at most like his wrist in thickness, he 

 is apt to fancy that he has covered the smface with fine 

 wood, when he has only disfigm^ed it with hedgestakes 

 and railings, which are at least as unsightly to behold as 

 they are expensive to keep up, and show a complete 

 absence of both taste and skill. The example which has 

 been quoted in Section V., of the effect of this sort of 

 wooding, by no means presents an overcharged picture of 

 the system. 



Perhaps the most perfect of all guards would be an 

 iron collar of about an inch and a half broad with a 

 hinge in the middle of it ; together with sharp-pointed 

 uprights of the same material, three feet thi^ee inches 

 high, and three quarters of an inch in thickness, for run- 

 ning into the ground. The uprights might be placed 

 about two inches asunder ; and to the whole might be 

 added a hasp, with notches in the collar, in order to ac- 

 commodate it to the progressive enlargement of the stem. 

 But the expense of such an apparatus, for trees of moder- 

 ate size, including painting of the colour of the bark, could 

 not be less than from twelve to fifteen shillings each, 

 which would completely preclude its general adoption. 

 A guard, therefore, which shoidd be at once neat, cheap, 

 and durable, seems still to be a desideratum in park 

 economy. 



There being between seven and eight hundred trans- 

 planted trees and bushes in loose dispositions in the park 

 here, it was necessary to construct something less hideous 

 and less costly than seven or eight hundred hurdles or 

 pahngs of four feet square ; as no featm^es of landscape 

 nor richness of fohage could have redeemed so over- 

 whelming a deformity. In Plate II. the reader will find 

 the delineation of such a guard for a park tree as has 



