The shapes and situations of the informal pond are even more numerous than those of the formal type. For the purpose of illus- tration, then, we will assume that we are planning the lay-out of a pond in the garden of a new house. The ground is as the builder left it, a barren waste of discarded tiles, bricks, mortar and other debris between which an occasional thistle or dandelion rears its proud head.

The garden at the back is, say, forty feet wide and eighty feet long, and if the end wall faces east then here will be the shadiest spot ; ferns may be planted in the two corners and along the back primulas and other bog plants. In front of the bog garden will be the pond, the greatest length of this will be across the garden ; if the bog garden is ten feet deep and a path of crazy paving three feet wide separates it from the pond, then the position of the pond will be correct.

A rather interesting shape for a pond so situated is that of two rough ovals joined at their narrowest ends ; where they join, the water may be shallow with stepping stones across. Flags, rushes and other tall marginal plants along the back will merge with the bog plants in forming the background ; there will be a water lily in each of the two ovals and along the front carpets of forget-me-not, water lobelia and other delightful, though small, aquatic plants. Large rocks around the edge and a border of crazy paving around this provide a finishing touch. There are a host of other designs that the imaginative mind can formulate, successions of small pools connected by waterfalls and so forth. Conversely, a series of small, elongated ponds, connected by gullies, could be made. In these the various types or sizes of fish could be isolated, the gullies being fitted with stoppers. When the broods are sufficiently grown, then the stoppers can be removed. In the chapter on " Fish breeding " suggestions are given for raising fishes in indoor tanks ; the same suggestions apply to outdoor breeding. The only exception is that in the open breeding is delayed until the warmer weather. The ponds themselves may be of the type described on page 15.

The object here is not so much to give designs as to put ideas into the reader's head, and having put them there give such advice as will facilitate the construction, for, no matter how bizarre the design may be, the principles of construction are the same.

The virgin garden, you might say, lends itself more freely to design than does an old garden. The case may be that a house has been purchased, in the grounds of which, as in many estates that started their career as farms in the long ago, there is a pond of a sort. That is to say, muddy and noisome in the Winter and dry in the Summer, and over all probably droops a dejected hawthorn.

Drastic treatment is necessary in this case ; the silt at the bottom must be cleared away- it makes excellent manure-so that the spring, to which the pond owed its origin, may function again. The process of beautification may then proceed as with an artificial pond.