ON WOOD AND PLANTATIONS. 
115 
purpose of variety ; if they differ in two or three, they 
become contrasts : if in all, they are opposite, and seldom 
group well together. Those, on the contrary, which are 
of one character, and are distinguished only as the 
characteristic mark is strongly or faintly impressed upon 
them, form a beautiful mass, and unity is preserved 
without sameness.”* 
There is another circumstance connected with the 
color of trees, that will doubtless suggest itself to the 
improver of taste, the knowledge of which may sometimes 
be turned to valuable account. We mean the effects 
produced in the apparent coloring of a landscape by 
distance, which painters term aerial perspective. Stand- 
ing at a certain position in a scene, the coloring is deep, 
rich, and full in the foreground, more tender and mellow 
in the middle-ground, and softening to a pale tint in the 
distance. 
“ Where to the eye three well marked distances 
Spread their peculiar coloring, vivid green, 
Warm brown, and black opake the foreground bears 
Conspicuous: sober olive coldly marks 
The second distance ; thence the third declines 
In softer blue, or lessening still, is lost 
In fainted purple. When thy taste is call’d 
To deck a scene where nature’s self presents 
All these distinct gradations, then rejoice 
As does the Painter, and like him apply 
Thy colors ; plant thou on each separate part 
Its proper foliage.” 
Advantage may occasionally be taken of this peculiarity 
in the gradation of color, in Landscape Gardening, by the 
creation, as it were, of an artificial distance. In grounds 
* Observations on Modem Gardening,, 
