THE RENOVATION OF OLD PLACES. 241 
from which the trees can be seen, or their beauty is of no avail. 
A dense forest around a home suggests the rudeness of pioneer 
life, not the refinement of culture. Forests breed timber, not 
sylvan beauty. It is the pasture-field, the park, and the brook- 
space, that give sun and scope and moisture to develop the sylvan 
pictures that painters love. Therefore in renovating over-grown 
places, bear in mind that the cutting away of some of your old 
trees may be necessary to reveal and improve the beauty of the 
others. 
Another and different fault of many old places, resulting from 
the effort of uneducated planters to avoid the error of over-crowd¬ 
ing trees and shrubs, is that of distributing them sparsely but 
pretty evenly all over the place. This is destructive of all picture¬ 
like effects, for it gives neither fine groups, nor open lawn; and even 
the single trees, however fine they may be, cannot be seen to 
advantage, because there are no openings large enough to see them 
from. This must be remedied by clearing out in some places and 
filling-in in others. 
There is one value in the possession of thrifty saplings of sorts 
not especially desirable, that few persons know, and which is very 
rarely made use of. We refer to their usefulness as stocks upon 
which to graft finer varieties, and by the greater strength of their 
well-established roots producing a growth of the inserted sorts 
much more luxuriant and showy than could be obtained in twice 
the time by fresh plantings. The black oak is not worth preserv¬ 
ing, unless of large size, but it can be readily grafted with the 
scarlet oak. White oaks in superfluous number may be grafted 
with the rare weeping oaks of England, or the Japan purple oak, or 
some of the peculiar varieties oi the Turkey oak. The common 
chestnut ( castatiea ) may be grafted with ornamental varieties of the 
Spanish chestnut; the common horse-chestnut or buckeye with a 
number of beautiful and singular varieties; the common “ thorn 
apple” of the woods with exquisite varieties of the English haw¬ 
thorns ; and the same with maples, elms, and all those trees of which 
grafts of novel varieties of the same species may be procured. 
Scions of rare varieties may be procured at our leading nurseries, 
or by sending through our seedsmen or nurserymen to England or 
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