The Art of Gardening 
to mean all those which have not been 
modified by the conscious action of art. 
We recognize a park-landscape as non -natu- 
ral ; but those rural landscapes in cultivated 
countries from which the designer of a park 
draws his best lessons, are also non-natural. 
“ If, in the idea of a natural state,” says 
an old English writer, “we included ground 
and wood and water, no spot in this isl- 
and can be said to be in a state of nat- 
ure. . . . Wherever cultivation has set 
its foot — wherever the plough and spade 
have laid fallow the soil — nature is become 
extinct.” 
Extinct is, of course, too strong a word 
if we take it in its full significance. But 
it is not too strong if we understand it 
as meaning those things which are most 
important to the landscape-gardener ; the 
compositions, the broad pictures, of Nature 
have been wiped out in all thickly settled 
countries. The effects we see may not be 
artistic effects, may not have resulted from 
a conscious effort after beauty ; but they are 
none the less artificial. They do not show 
us what Nature wants to do or can do, but 
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