1885.] EDINBURGH NEWS NOTES. 415 



EDINBUBGH NEWS NOTES. 



MUNICIPAL dignitaries claim the first notice. Blackford Hill 

 opened, and the proposed planting of Leith Walk, with a 

 mooted suggestion to cover the Castle Eock with ivy, are amongst 

 the city sylvicultural ideas accomplished or proposed. Dwellers in 

 Scott's own romantic town should be aware that high crags can 

 only be set off with tall trees, whose proper site is under their 

 scarps, not in the unprotected open. A spectator on the Calton 

 Hill has but to look westwards to be convinced that the true place 

 for sylviculture is occupied l>y densely overcrowded lower Green- 

 side. And mistakes as egregious may be as speedily perpetuated in 

 such rapidly-taken-up new feuing-grounds as at Blackford Hill, for 

 lack of a general laying-out plan, covering all the area of our seven- 

 hilled city. Our sharp spring winds are now putting in a plea for 

 reminder. Protection is as necessary as soil for successful tree- 

 growing. On one side of the main street of St. Andrews, trees 

 attract notice of strangers by their wonderful foliage ; the other side 

 of the same thoroughfare is disgraced by withered, because un- 

 sheltered, poles. Mr. Macleod informs me that often four to five old 

 gas pipes are disclosed in new openings in our streets, all saturating 

 the adjacent soil with vapour inimical to plant life. By the way, 

 few more ludicrous objects strike a stranger in windy weather than 

 the young saplings of the Meadows in their iron guards, specially if 

 two gardeners be trying might and main to keep tree and surround- 

 ing high encumbrance in a position of stable equilibrium ! Let the 

 Cockburn Association take this matter up. 



The sayings of the Botanical Society last month were a special 

 plea for life in the woods and mountains. Mr. Grieve's camp for 

 botanical exploration is to do work, possibly in Sutherlandshire, or 

 some like Highland district, during summer, where students may 

 reside a month or two at a time. In the discussion, one instance 

 was given of the discovery of a plant supposed to be lost to the 

 British flora, simply because botanists usually hurry over its site on 

 Ben Lawers, anxious to overtake a great area in a limited spiace. 

 Does this oljjection not also apply to the Arboricultural Society's 

 excursions ? Space forbids me to dilate on other curious matters 

 brought before the botanists. Mr. C. Crawford's graphic description 

 of the trees of different years' growth in a Canadian forest, the result 

 of fires, the Yankee notion of grafting vines on the cacti now sur- 

 rounding the arid railway tracts of Arizona, and the oranges all stuck 

 over with projections like little fingers, were amongst the delectable 

 diet given to the fellows. 



