A Word for the Axe 
many cases where beauty of general effect is 
injured by superfluous trees, but quite as 
many where the trees themselves are injured 
by overcrowding. Trees which have started 
spontaneously, or have been carefully planted 
by a landscape-gardener in such a way that, 
while young, they agreeably clothed the spot 
and usefully nursed each other, have been al- 
lowed to grow into spindling groves or tan- 
gled thickets which are not beautiful as a 
whole and contain not a single satisfactory 
specimen of tree-development. 
Here, for example, is a solid clump which 
has no beauty of outline and no variety of 
light and shadow, and in which the colors of 
the different species are mixed in a confusion 
that is not true contrast. Thinned out in 
time, we might have had instead a smaller 
number of fine specimens, each graceful in 
form, each contrasting agreeably in color 
with its neighbors, and all together making 
a group or a little wood which would have 
pleased, not only by its beautiful outlines, 
but by its evidence of healthy and luxuriant 
growth. 
Here, again, is a line of trees which 
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