538 EDITORIAL NOTES. [Jan. 



at by the writer in our contemporary are an honour to them, and no 

 doubt also a source of pleasure and recreation thoroughly appreciated 

 by them, wliile the possession of these acquirements in no way 

 lessens their value as practical men, but rather greatly enhances it. 

 What we want is more of this sort of men amongst our foresters, 

 and this is why we wish to see a Forestry School established. We 

 readily admit that great foresters are not to be made in schools any 

 more than great generals, but we have no right to expect either if 

 we do not provide the means for their acquiring both the practical 

 and technical education required to enable them to perform their 

 part in the one art or the other. 



EucALYPTS IN Italy. — We learn from a German authority that 

 the plantations of eucalypts made in malarious districts in Italy 

 have so far proved a failure. The trees do not grow : either the soil 

 or the climate, or both, are unfavourable. This is somewhat 

 wonderful in a tree that in this less favoured climate makes 

 astonishing progress in summer ; only, however, in the milder 

 districts, and not always in even them, to be spared by our severe 

 winters. It is not only wonderful, but disappointing, that a tree 

 which a few years ago was trumpeted so loudly as a specific against 

 malarial fevei", should fail in the largest experiment ever tried with 

 it. We are afraid it is no fit subject to plant in marshes, for even 

 if it succeeded in growing well, tlie growth would be of such a spongy 

 nature that winter's frost even in many parts of sunny Italy would 

 be fatal to it. We find the same authority recommending Laurus 

 glandulosus, various American and Indian Accrs, Salix Bahylonica, 

 and several poplars as substitutes for the eucalypts, and claiming 

 for them several febrifugal properties to those claimed for the 

 eucalypts. We are not aware that this claim for the latter has 

 ever been advanced on reliable grounds, and this grand Italian 

 experiment having failed, we are not likely soon to have the point 

 satisfactorily settled. 



American Holly Boughs fok Christmas Decorations. — Our 

 American cousins are not so favoured as ourselves in the supply of 

 holly branches for decorating their homes at Christmas-tide. Our 

 European hollies do not endure the intense winters, nor the heat and 

 drought of the summers of most parts of the United States ; the 

 extremes of climate are too much for them. Still holly branches must 

 be obtained at Christmas by our American friends as surely as roast 

 beef, plum-pudding, and mince pies, for they like all the associations 

 of the great annual festive season as dearly as we do at home. 



