Several years ago a man from the North spent a winter near my home and was a frequent visitor in my hammock. He claimed to be a lover of nature but he wrote atrocious doggerel poetry, and what was worse, he insisted on inflicting it on me. One day he dragged me to a seat in the hammock and read me one of these effusions containing some fifty or sixty stanzas and then looking around he said: "Do you know what I would do with this timber if I had it?" and when I gave it up he said: "If this was mine I would take my ax and chop out all the underbrush and all the crooked and little trees, and I'd clean out all those gnarly oaks that is layin' round and I'd pull off that long moss an' all that rubbish that's growin' on them trees and then it would look as tho' somebody had been here and done something for it." Sure enough, that is just what the average person seems to be crazy to do, he wants to clean up, to improve, to let people know that he has been there and with his wisdom has fixed things and made them "look purty".

It seems to be an instinct among humans to want to mutilate, cut down and destroy trees. Sir James Brooke tells how the lazy natives of Borneo cut down and burn up new tracts of beautiful virgin forest with an outlay of an immense amount of labor, in preference to working the land they already have cleared, though of course the new land is full of roots and stumps.

Here in South Florida we have a lot of men who buy up land, clear off the vegetation, lay it out into lots and sell it. It seems to be their especial delight to get hold of hammock, put in a gang of ignorant Negroes, and utterly destroy the beautiful growth that it has taken centuries to create.

If you are fortunate enough to obtain a piece of virgin hammock, let it alone for a time; study it carefully and learn its beauties, learn to love and fully appreciate it, find out all the objects of interest in it and when you are fully acquainted with its weird attractions a path or paths may be carefully cut through it to whatever is of most interest, always leading these trails along the lines of least resistance. As a general thing no large or valuable trees need be removed, and abrupt turns are allowable. The walk may be carried far enough in from the border of the wood so that one cannot see out and yet far enough away from any of its turnings or reaches that it will be impossible to see across to it. In this way it will make the hammock appear to be much larger than it really is.

There should be an open space left in front of the house for a lawn or grass plot. Even if one has only a good sized lot it seems to me to be better taste to lay out a small area to be planted in grass than to fill up the whole with trees and shrubs. Leave it all free and open; do not disfigure it by putting beds of plants or shrubs in it. Its border does not need to be regular; in this one may well imitate nature, and nature doesn't make straight rows or borders. Keep the roads and paths away from the center of the lawn; in fact let it be an uninterrupted sheet of grass if possible.

Whatever is done in the way of laying out a place should be honest and sincere; there should be no shams, no shallow trickery. One should remember that he is doing work for a lifetime; if it is to be his home he will have to live with it; it will be his constant companion year by year. It is wise then to give to such a task plenty of time and the very best that is within him. Of course if one has an extensive tract it may be best to consult a landscape gardener, but it seems to me that in a majority of cases where there is only a limited area it is best for one to find out what he wants, study carefully the situation and work out a plan himself.