130 PAEKS AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS. 



facilitate drainage, and to suit the conveniences of tillage. 

 The normal type of the agricultural field is a square or 

 parallelogram ; but these forms can scarcely be intro- 

 duced into the park, at least visibly, without a wretched 

 effect, Many parks are subdivided by such a multiplicity 

 of hedges and walls as to deprive them of all apparent con- 

 tinuity of surface, and therefore of that unity which is 

 always so desirable. We have often seen the contour of 

 a small hill destroyed by a hedge planted along its top, 

 the slope of a fine bank interrupted by a wall run up 

 or across its breast, or what is perhaps even worse, the 

 bottom of a small and beautiful valley crossed and re- 

 crossed by hedge and ditch or dry stone wall, to the 

 utter destruction of the natural beauty of the locality. 

 Clearly the internal fences of the park should be so 

 arranged as to avoid these barbarously mutilating divi- 

 sions of sm-faces. Indeed, could the woods be reared for 

 the first forty or fifty years vrithout fences, there might 

 be an almost total absence of that formality and inter- 

 ference with contour so common in most parks; and 

 there would be much more of that tree irregularity of 

 outline which is so characteristic a feature in the group- 

 ing of the natural forest. But as we have already said, 

 internal fences in the park cannot be dispensed with : 

 yet in relation to the general scenery they should be 

 regarded as necessary evils, and those forms and distri- 

 butions of them should be preferred which are least con- 

 spicuous and obtrusive. Lines should be adopted which 

 accommodate themselves to the form of the ground, or 

 which may be most easily masked or relieved with scat- 

 tered trees. With these objects in view, the enclosures 

 of the woods and clumps may be made to form a 

 considerable portion of the divisional fences of the park. 



