Ornamental planting, artistically considered, is a grade of landscape adornment but seldom attempted, but it is one that should receive attention in the present condition of landscape art, an art that is rapidly winning its way to every rural home of taste and refinement. True art, when used in beautifying a country estate, will not consent to an indiscriminate and meaningless jumble of trees and shrubs, but will take advantage of the many varied and striking effects of color, form, light, shadow, aerial and linear perspective, and other appliances of high art, which, with all their combinations, go to make up resources for composition that are inexhaustible.

A group of trees all of the same kind is tame and uninteresting, and no one would plant in this manner, if he understood art. A group is more attractive if variety is a prominent feature; not only variety as regards form, but variety in color, and variety in form of that color. If we study natural scenery, we see no sameness of color; the grass at our feet is a positive green, that in the middle distance is a negative green, and thai in the far distance is purple or grey; every advance towards distance from the point of observation neutralizes the positive colors of the foreground. It is an easy matter to separate the colors and sizes of trees, and plant them to produce ,the same aerial perspective effects shown in nature; that is, to take advantage of the hint nature gives, and plant so that the eye runs off from color to color, and from point to point, until it gets the distant view.

Suppose we wish to plant a vista, and have it end with a distant view of the Hudson: the frame for this little cabinet piece is to be on our own grounds, the view to be seen from only one point, perhaps our library window: in the foreground we plant the tallest and most positively colored trees, warm bright greens; beyond these, approaching each other and diminishing in size, we introduce masses of trees of a negative tone of color, using several species in each mass, then continue with group after group to run down the tones of color, until you terminate with the coldest and most negative, and nature then continues her regular graduations far off to the final distance; the reverse of this has a contrary effect, and, judiciously used, one may widen out and narrow up an estate, and produce many curious effects.

Perfect familiarity with the adaptation, resources, and combinations of color, should be an acquisition of every Landscape Artist, if artistic and beautiful effects are to be produced, and this knowledge of color can be acquired at the easel in the same manner as the landscape painter acquires it. With the rural artist there must cease to be experiments; there must be no guess-work, nothing to be done a second time, and withal a system of economy in his operations, the results of which will illustrate the fact that High Art in landscape operations is not only far more beautiful and satisfactory, but its economy recommends it strongly in advance of any experimental system that has yet been devised.

Groups or masses of trees should be composed of different varieties; wc would not, however, select ten varieties, and form every group of these ten, but by combining size, form, color, etc., we increase our resources for variety a thousand fold. He who plants groups with one kind of trees, ends his varieties with the number of different species of trees; but he who introduces form, size, color, light, shadow, relief, aerial perspective, etc., can produce endless and beautiful changes.

A group of a single species of tree lacks art; but bring out the deciduous Cypress in strong relief against the Scotch Pine, and you have an effect that will command attention; then carry the Pine into the distance, and interpolate the colors that graduate between it and the Cypress, and in an artist's hands there is the material for much that is attractive. We advocate bold effects, strong contrasts, strong lights, and heavy shadows, but we want the material for such effects, not the monotony unavoidable by the repetition of a single species of tree and a single color. By a process of this kind, one is enabled to multiply masses, groups, belts, vistas, avenues, etc., ad infinitum, and avoid understandingly any repetition. We are well aware that a distinguished author on landscape gardening advocates the planting of groups, by using single varieties of trees, and for this reason. Eight kinds of trees occupying the-same position in eight groups, would produce eight groups exactly alike, while if each group were composed of one of the eight varieties of trees, there would be eight groups entirely different; but there is nothing arbitrary in the form of the group, nor the height, nor color, nor are we confined to any particular number, sizes, shapes, or varieties of trees, but we have an endless variety of conditions that admit of an endless va-riety of change.

Eight notes in music exactly similar yield no variety; the eight notes of the scale produce a never-ending charm.

In the arrangement of groups the principles of aerial perspective can be introduced with fine effect, and each variety or color of tree brought out in strong relief against the one behind it, while at the same time appearance of size and extent is conveyed, which does not really exist.

"where to the eye three well-marked distances Spread their peculiar coloring, vivid green, Warm brown, and black opake the foreground bears Conspicuous: sober olive coldly marks The second distance; thence the third declines In softer bine, or, lessening still, is lost In fainted purple. When thy taste is call'd To deck a scene where nature's self presents All these distinct gradations, then rejoice As does the Painter, and like him apply Thy colors; plant thou on each separate part Its proper foliage".

To illustrate the effects that may be produced by groups, let us study a view up or down the Hudson, or any fine river with projecting headlands; we see the atmospheric changes of color more decided; that is, the eye is not led off imperceptibly from the positive foreground colors to the negative tints of distance, but we skip from one to the other, and in this manner see each headland grow more negative in color as its distance increases. An unpractised or an uneducated eye sees no different tones of the same color in a broad landscape view, but we all know that distant hills, mountains, or shores appear near by or far off in the atmospheric changes that take place between a warm bright yellow sunlight, and a dull grey cloudy morning.