Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect; A Lover of Nature and of His Kind, Who Trained Himself for a New Profession, Practised It Happily and Through It W

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ...the woods for the protection they afford to the canal and its retaining-banks, of the way in which the intelligent preservation of trees along even the tiniest brooks of the neighboring hill farms has resulted in unusual beauty of farm scenery, as well as in the prevention of that extravagant washing away of soil which results from carrying ploughing to the edges of watercourses. All through this district it is most interesting to note how beauty has resulted from the exercise of common sense and intelligence. When we turn the other way, and climb the hill above the railroad station, we find a charming winding road, the sides of which are irregularly overgrown with trees, shrubs, climbers, and herbaceous plants. The footpath is there; but it dodges in and out, and goes here below a knoll and there on top, and does not stick to the roadside like a city sidewalk by any manner of means. Every now and then we pass the entrance of some city man's country estate,--there must be a dozen or twenty such estates in this fine hillside,--and in the course of a summer afternoon we make the round of them. Presumably all these gentlemen have distinctly intended to preserve or create beauty in the surroundings of their country homes. It is very interesting to see the several methods they have followed, and the various results obtained. Some of these estates seem very beautiful to us, while others are far less interesting. After allowing for all differences of natural opportunity, can any general reason for this contrast in results be found? It is obvious at once that the most beautiful of these places are not those upon which the most money has been spent, not those in which natural conditions have been most completely revolutionized, not those which...