446 
LANDSCAPE G A KDENING. 
twelve feet wide and six feet deep, it would be easy 
enough to predict the result at the end of five or six 
years. Besides which it is a very simple matter t6 know 
the effect certain trees or certain groups of trees are 
going to produce by setting up a few stakes, which 
shall cover the same extent of ground; and it is a 
very easy matter to move these groups of stakes until 
they are rightly and properly placed beyond any ques- 
tion, and then to proceed with our planting. By con- 
tinuing in this way with all our planting we may, as 
we have shown elsewhere, get every thing placed, with- 
out the possibility of error. 
It is impossible to do this in a wood. We cannot 
carve out the views and the groups and masses, exactly 
as we wish, because we cannot find the trees always 
ready to assist us. It often happens that the finest tree is 
just where we should prefer to have none; and where 
we want density and bulk to hide unsightly objects, we 
have naked poles of fifty feet, with ten feet of brush 
up in the sky instead of where it should be, on the ground. 
There is no remedy in such cases but to cut down our 
fine tree or abandon the view it hides, and also to cut 
down our unavailable giants and to plant in their places. 
We are, in this instance, not as well off as our friend 
without trees, because we have to do all that he does 
with the additional labor of grubbing up the old stumps 
and renewing the soil before planting. There are, to 
be sure, instances as we have mentioned in our own 
case above, where we can make the native forest avail- 
able by topping those trees which will admit it, and by 
planting among and in front of them ; but even this, 
for many years, is not satisfactory. The dignity of the 
original trees, if any dignity is left, is much injured and 
frittered away by being side by side with our newly 
planted Norway s and hemlocks of only three feet in 
height ; while our own trees, which, in a few years at 
least, would make their mark where no comparisons 
