WINTER 1879-80 UPOX TREES AND SHRUBS. 71 



iintouclied, and growing this year at its normal rate in the 

 formation of wood, while the Quercus jpedunculata, or common 

 and indigenons oak-tree, has suffered in some places around 

 Edinburgh severely in its young twigs of one or two years' 

 growth. It is also a fact worthy of record that the Hungary 

 oak in 1879 made more wood and increased more in girth — not- 

 witlistanding the unpropitious nature of the previous season for 

 the ripening of young shoots of hard-wooded trees — than any 

 other variety of oak. Many of the thorns did not flower this 

 season nearly so profusely as usual, owing to the severity of last 

 winter. At Craigiehall, however, while there was compara- 

 tively little l:)loom this year, one variety (a light-coloured double 

 pink or almost white thorn) was quite laden with blossom, 

 although in no perceptible way better accommodated as to site, 

 soil, or shelter than its fellows of other varieties. 



Of the newer Coniferae, Ciopressiis lawsoniana appears to have 

 stood better in every instance than any other, and may be said 

 to be almost universally untouched by the frosts ; and all the 

 Japanese Conifera? and evergreens of recent importation, ex- 

 cepting the privet, which at Newliston, in West Lothian, is 

 killed to the ground, have enjoyed a remarkable immunity from 

 the frost. This has been in previous severe winters occasionally 

 noticed ; but now that the various species are so generally 

 distributed over the country, their remarkable hardihood and 

 capacity for enduring very sudden and severe variations in the 

 temperature has been more prominently brought to public 

 notice, while tlie beauty and elegance of their varied foliage has 

 made them G^eneral favourites, worth v of wider introduction in 

 our parks and pleasure-grounds. 



Besides the thorn, many others of our hardy early-flowering 

 trees and slirubs have this season been conspicuous generally by 

 the noteworthy absence of blossom in almost every situation and 

 exposure. • This has been especially noticed in lilacs, rhododen- 

 drons (including the hardy Ponticum), Philaddphvs, Deutzia, 

 Weigclias, Rihcs, &c. Horse-chestnuts also have been without 

 a single spike of flower excepting in rare instances, and then the 

 flowers on this tree, as on most others which have made an 

 effort to put forth blossoms this year, have been quite small and 

 puny, and anything but luxuriant or healthy. The lal)urnum 

 probably forms the only exception in most districts to this rule, 

 as in many places it has flowered profusely after an interval of 

 two seasons. Holly l)errios, usually in sciirlet profusion at 

 Christmas, were very scant and only green and half-grown at 

 that date ; and on many of the trees in sheltered situations, on 

 which the crop of berries was at all abundant, they were only 

 ripe in May of this year, and in several places the scarlet crop 

 remains uneaten and has fallen to the ground, owing to the 



