Mr. Uvedale Price, in his unrivalled instructions for the creation of pieces of artificial water, has suggested another excellent method by which the outlines and banks of lakes may be varied. This is, first, by cutting down the banks, in some places nearest the water, perpendicularly, and then undermining them. This will produce a gradual variation in some parts, which, falling to pieces, will produce new and irregular accidental outlines. When, by the action of rain and frost, added to that of the water itself, large fragments of mould tumble from the hollowed banks of rivers or lakes, these fragments, by the accumulation of other mould, often lose their rude and broken form, are covered with the freshest grass, and enriched with tufts of natural flowers; and though detached from the bank, and upon a lower level, still appear connected with it, and vary its outline in the softest and most pleasing manner. As fragments of the same kind will always be detached from ground that is undermined, so by their means the same effects may designedly be produced; and they will suggest numberless intricacies and varieties of a soft and pleasing, as well as of a broken kind.
