A Word for the Axe 



many cases where beauty of general effect is 

 injured by superfluous trees, but quite as 

 many where the trees themselves are injured 

 by overcrowding. Trees which have started 

 spontaneously, or have been carefully planted 

 by a landscape-gardener in such a way that, 

 while young, they agreeably clothed the spot 

 and usefully nursed each other, have been al- 

 lowed to grow into spindling groves or tan- 

 gled thickets which are not beautiful as a 

 whole and contain not a single satisfactory 

 specimen of tree-development. 



Here, for example, is a solid clump which 

 has no beauty of outhne and no variety of 

 light and shadow, and in which the colors of 

 the different species are mixed in a confusion 

 that is not true contrast. Thinned out in 

 time, we might have had instead a smaller 

 number of line specimens, each graceful in 

 form, each contrasting agreeably in color 

 with its neighbors, and all together making 

 a group or a little wood which would have 

 pleased, not only by its beautiful outlines, 

 but by its evidence of healthy and luxuriant 

 growth. 



Here, again, is a line of trees which 

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