HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 171 
inquiry. It is often denied that one scene is any more natural than another, 
if they are each the growth of nature. An orchard, say these objectors, 
is just as natural as a wild forest, and a garden of tulips as natural as a 
tract of wild pasture, thickly overgrown with indigenpus herbs, flowers and 
shrubbery. Though it cannot be denied that one is the production of nature 
as well as the other, yet the former deviates more widely from the process, 
the direction and the forms of vegetation which nature causes to appear on 
the face of the earth, when she is left to her own spontaneous efforts. 
To ascertain these principles, we must take note, in the first place, of the 
course of nature in the wilderness, where she has been left, from immemo- 
rial time, to her own spontaneous efforts : secondly, of her course in clear- 
ings, where, after man has removed the trees and shrubs, she is left, undis- 
turbed, to replenish the space : thirdly, in land which has been once entirely 
subjugated by the tiller of the soil, and then left to nature to overcome the 
effects of tillage in her efforts to restore her original creation : lastly, of the 
course of nature in those places in which man, acting as an improver, has 
endeavored to regulate her operations. In each of the three first cases, the 
work of nature may be considered legitimate : and although, under each of 
these circumstances, the results may be widely different, they all equally 
indicate the laws of nature, when left to those apparent chances by which 
the indigenous vegetation of any land is restored. 
Before I proceed further in this inquiry I will allude to the importance of 
imitating the ways of nature, when creating landscapes and laying out 
pleasure gronnds, with the design of obtaining from them the greatest 
amount of enjoyment. It has been denied that the pursuit of this course 
will insure a more favorable result than to follow one that is strictly arti- 
ficial, as in the Dutch gardens. I would freely admit that in horticultural 
operations, as in the planting of nurseries, arboretums, and beds for florists' 
flowers, any attempt to imitate nature would be as absurd as to attempt it 
in the cornfield or the kitchen garden. The objectors remark that the 
tangled wilderness is far from agreeable, either as a place for recreation or 
as a scene for the entertainment of the eye; that it is destitute both of 
beauty and comfort, and that we always take more pleasure in a garden that 
is well kept, than in one that is overgrown with weeds. These objections 
are based on a misconception of the true meaning of the natural as distin- 
guished from the artificial in landscape. There is a vagueness in the signi- 
fication of these terms which it is difiicult to clear up. I am disposed to 
apply the epithet natural to all those scenes in which art has wrought in 
harmony Avith nature : and I believe it will be found that in all old settle- 
