160 
ON PLANTING ISOLATED TREES. 
arboreous vegetation constitute a relief to the rugged scenery around. On the con- 
trary, if the domain offer a variety of gently undulated glades, and the tract 
encompassing it he comparatively level, an increased number of isolated trees appears 
called for, in order to impart a greater diversity of outline, and break up the mono- 
tony that would be occasioned by forest groups. 
Both these principles, however, if allowed to be accurate, will bear considerable 
modification. Indeed, all we seek to enforce is, that in districts where either of 
the features depicted is very marked, there its opposite should prevail ; not to the 
exclusion in the one case of detached specimens, or in the other of judiciously varied 
assemblages, but just so as to make the appropriate feature most obvious from 
almost every point of view. There will, also, of necessity, be places intermediate 
between the extremes mentioned, and partaking, in various degrees, of either or 
both of their characteristics. For such, the hint we have thrown out is only 
generally applicable, and must be accommodated, in detail, according to the prevail- 
ing peculiarities. 
On the arrangement of groups, with regard to the best positions for them, and 
the selection and association of particular kinds of trees, we are not at present to 
enter. Our business in this paper is with single specimens ; and we will first 
specify one or two situations in which they would be inappropriate, then advert to 
the positions to which they seem most accordant, and afterwards note a few of the 
advantages attending this system of planting ; constantly bearing in mind the two 
main suggestions already offered. 
Detached trees ought never to be placed on the summit of a hill. It is indis- 
pensable that, wherever the sky forms the background of a scene — or, in other words, 
when there are no distant hills or other objects intervening between the top of an 
eminence, as seen from a principal or central point of vision, and the sky — or where 
the hill spoken of constitutes the horizon of the spectator — -broad, expansive masses 
of wood or turf should alone be visible. And even when, for the purpose of en- 
suring variety, these are interspersed with smaller groups, single trees would stand 
out too boldly, too distinctly, and interfere too abruptly with the apparent, though 
irregular, continuity of the line of the horizon, to be at all pleasing. The desideratum 
in such instances appears to be an agreeable undulation of surface only ; which is 
best created by the tops alone of intermingled spiry and round-headed, conical and 
fastigiated trees. Wherever, therefore, an individual tree surmounts a hill, it 
evidently wants a smaller one on either side of it, to render its upper or external 
line continuous with the turf below ; otherwise its bare stems, and the reduction 
of its diameter towards the base, (this being precisely the part where it is required to 
expand,) would have a very disagreeable appearance. 
Solitary specimens (with the exception of Alders and Willows) are further ob- 
jectionable, but by no means to so great an extent, immediately on the margins of 
rivers or spacious lakes. Water and wood (the latter term being used in the sense 
of an aggregation of trees) are universally considered beautiful in combination ; but 
