A Word for the Axe 



effect is distressing indeed when they are of 

 ahen, inharmonious kinds. This is not an 

 uncommon sight. It is not uncommon to 

 find even a tapering evergreen and a round- 

 headed deciduous tree growing so close to 

 one another that their branches interlock, 

 and their discordant forms and colors and 

 textures are welded together in a union as 

 unnatural to the mind as displeasing to the 

 eye. 



These words for the axe have often been 

 spoken before. In all lands, in all times, 

 thoughtless persons have probably held it 

 criminal, under any avoidable circum- 

 stances, to cut down a tree; and so the 

 whole literature of gardening art echoes the 

 complaint of the modern artist — the cry that 

 no difficulty with which he has to cope is so 

 great as the difficulty of making an owner 

 thin out his plantations at the proper time 

 and in the proper way. Brown, the famous 

 English landscape-gardener of the eighteenth 

 century, has been bitterly abused by later 

 generations because he bequeathed them mul- 

 titudes of close, round, hard clumps of trees, 



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