ARRANGEMENT OF WOODS IN THE PARK. 117 



description, but is of not inferior importance. A 

 group may, indeed, be conceived in a state of isolation 

 from objects of the same kind, as two or three human 

 figures in the corner of a landscape-painting, a few 

 statues on a terrace, or a patch of palm-trees in a wide 

 desert ; but there is probably always, even in the case 

 of the palm-trees, a mental reference to existing ac- 

 companiments, perceived or imagined. In landscape- 

 gardening, a group, though apparently detached, is 

 uniformly part of a whole. It remains to be added, 

 that groups are either simple or composite: simple, 

 when they are made up of single objects, such as trees 



* or statues ; composite, when they are formed of single 

 groups, or of the other more condensed and extended 

 bodies of trees, which we now proceed to mention. 

 A Glum]) is a group considerably increased in the 

 number and density of its component parts, without 

 any apparent internal arrangement, but with a definite 

 figure and decided outline. A clump of trees may be 

 called a small wood. Yiewed at a moderate distance, 

 the form of that half of it which is next the spectator 

 can be taken in at once by the eye.* A Mass of wood 

 is hardly a technical term, but yet a very convenient 

 one. It denotes a large body of growing timber, ex- 

 hibiting an apparent continuity of boughs and foliage, 

 and of such depth that the horizontal light can not be 

 seen through the stems of the trees. That portion of 



* Lexicographers inform us that the word clump was originally written plump, and 

 they adduce as examples, a plump of trees, of horse, of fowls, etc. Near the beginning 

 of 'Marmion,' Sir "Walter Scott, imitating an old ballad, employs the expression, "a 

 plump of spears," and adds in a Bote, "This word properly applies to a flight of 



• water-fowl, but is applied by analogy to a body of horse." From certain analogies in 

 words derived from the Anglo-Saxon, it would seem that chimp and lump are nearly 

 allied, if not identical; and it must be owned that a lump of trees is a phrase not a 

 little descriptive of many clumps to be found in parks and pleasure-grounds. 



