House and Garden 
ation, are yet in no way ridiculous or pre¬ 
tentious, but have a real art value apart from 
the ingenuity of their construction. They 
are carved profusely with festoons of leaves 
and flowers, shellfish, birds, etc., in a style 
admirably suited to their purpose and posi¬ 
tion, and difficult to parallel. This is going 
a step farther than usual, for not only is the 
rock itself conventionalized, but the very 
vegetation and animal life that might cover 
boulders chosen for their beauty and irregu¬ 
larity, and assembled with much care and 
expense into an appearance of artless econ¬ 
omy; “cottages” of this kind are popular in 
the summer-resort regions of New England 
and in other places where loose and time- 
checkered stones abound; and in spite of 
their often over-studied rusticity, they har¬ 
monize with their situation and surround¬ 
ings as do habitations built out of the nearest 
THE ROCK GARDEN, BROADGATE, BARNSTAPLE 
it. In many an American park and garden 
rough boulders are used to support a steep 
bank, like a retaining wall, or to make steps, 
or for some other very practical purpose; 
and they are more likely than not to be cov¬ 
ered wholly or partially with vines or other 
foliage. The illustrations show such erections 
when first built and when overgrown with 
foliage. 
Many buildings, garden houses, stables, 
and even dwellings, are built of weathered 
and most available materials. Even the 
rough-faced masonry so popular since the 
days of Richardson, with its crowning achieve¬ 
ment in the Pittsburgh Court House, is but 
a step farther in the conventionalizing of 
natural rocks and rock construction, and 
expresses in its most sophisticated form the 
general feeling for the surface of untooled 
stone. 
Thus a consideration of a great many ex¬ 
amples will go to show that rough rocks are 
163 
