Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/267

REFINEMENTS AND PASTIMES trees and shrubs he has to use, and recognises "one hundred and thirty-eight principal stones and rocks having special names and functions, in addition to others of secondary importance." There are some fifty stones that bear the names of Buddhist saints, and have their appropriate positions and inter-relations in monastery gardens; there are five radical rock-shapes, which may be combined, two, three, four, or even five at a time; and there are broad divisions of hill stones, lake and river stones, cascade stones, island stones, valley stones, tea-garden stones, stepping-stones and water-basin stones, with their ninety-one subdivisions and their various orthodox groupings. In stone lanterns twenty-three specially designated shapes are found, and in water-basins thirteen, while for each form of lantern or basin there is an appropriate accompaniment of rocks, stones, shrubs, and trees. Fences, gates, and bridges, again, constitute a special branch of the art. Hundreds of varieties have been designed and have received the approval of great masters, and the skilled landscape-gardener knows which of these will best consort with a given environment, and how to make a delightful picture of grace, rusticity, cosiness, and warmth out of materials which from the hands of a tyro would emerge commonplace and uninteresting. Even wells have their gradus, and many volumes have been devoted to the discussion and 239