ON WOOD AND PLANTATIONS. 
77 
awkwardly planted, it is exceedingly difficult to give it a 
natural and agreeable air ; while many a tame level, with 
scarcely a glimpse of distance, has been rendered lovely 
by its charming groups of trees. How necessary, therefore, 
is it, in the very outset, that the novice, before he begins 
to plant, should know how to arrange a tasteful group ! 
Nothing, at first thought, would appear easier than to 
arrange a few trees in the form of a natural and beautiful 
group, — and nothing really is easier to the practised hand. 
Yet experience has taught us that the generality of persons, 
in commencing their first essays in ornamental planting, 
almost invariably crowd their trees into a close, regular 
clump , which has a most formal and unsightly appearance, 
as different as possible from the easy, flowing outline of 
the group. 
u Natural groups are full of openings and hollows, of 
trees advancing before, or retiring behind each other ; 
all productive of intricacy, of variety, of deep shadows 
and brilliant lights.” 
The chief care, then, which is necessary in the forma 
tion of groups, is, not to place them in any regular or 
artificial manner, — as one at each corner of a triangle, 
square, octagon, or other many-sided figure ; but so to 
dispose them, as that the whole may exhibit the variety, 
connexion, and intricacy seen in nature. “ The greatest 
beauty of a group of trees,” says Loudon, “ as far as 
respects their stems, is in the varied direction these take 
as they grow into trees ; but as that is, for all practical 
purposes, beyond the influence of art, all we can do, is to 
vary as much as possible the ground plan of groups, or 
the relative positions which the stems have to each other 
where they spring from the earth. This is considerable. 
