14 BRITISH FERNS, 
- decoration with the gardeners; and next to flints in 
the category of things to be avoided, I must mention 
wood of all kinds. Trunks of trees with their boughs 
chopped off and the roots stuck upwards, in addition 
to their ugliness, possess the great disadvantage of 
introducing myriads of wood-lice, the devastating 
propensities of which can only be learned by actual 
experience, 
_ In the arrangement of the masses of stone there 
hs great scope for the exhibition of taste; but taste 
: eannot be taught by printed rules; it must either 
_ be intuitive or result from experience. Even for- 
mality becomes beautiful in the hands of Nature 
herself or Nature’s students ; for instance, what 
structure can be more formal than a well; the hollow 
of a symmetrical cylinder, the stones or bricks of 
which it is built ranged round, circle after circle, 
with the most unimaginative sameness : 
‘the Hart’s Tongue, and in F aii ren 
True Maidenhair. I need not dwell ‘on ‘the: 
of scenes like these. Eyen that most 
beauty — 
formal and 
