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FOKEIGN NOTICES. 511 



Eo^eIgi(] Koflces. 



Effects of Winter on Conifers. — The last winter lias enabled us to judge more correctly than 

 before of the effects of as low a temperature as we usually experience, even in extreme cases, 

 upon most of the newly introduced trees and shrubs. From information communicated to the 

 Gardeners^ Chronicle, and fiom several other sources, the Horticultural Society have been able to 

 cause an instructive return to be prepared, which is published in the number of their journal 

 just out. It is needless to say that this is a subject of the highest interest in the innumerable 

 lovers of "hardy" plants, who spend large sums of money upon their acquisition, and wlio are 

 greatly annoyed when the assurances that they have received of a costly plant being certainly 

 quite hardy, prove to be fallacious. To be hardy, in the proper sense of the word, a tree must be 

 able to bear not only our ordinary winters, which are remarkable only for their mildness, but 

 those instances of much lower temperature which are certain to occurr every ten or fifteen years, 

 and of which we have no previous warning. 



The question of hardiness is by no means easy to determine conclusively. Mere identity ol 

 temperature does not indicate identity of climates; the thermometer may fall to zero in two 

 places, of which one has a warm, dry, well drained soil, the other a cold, damp, heavy soil, and 

 plants will escape in the first which perish in the last. A great variety of analogous circumstances, 

 unobserved, and perhaps inappreciable, assist in complicating the matter, so that, for absolute 

 exactness, each species of tree would require to be made the subject of a dissertation. But life is 

 too short for us to wait for elaborate inquiries, and we must be satisfied with such an approxima- 

 tion to truth as can be readily obtained. The most satisfactory way of arriving at such truth is 

 by obtaining returns from many different places, in different situations, and conqiariug the 

 evidence relating to each new species with that collected in the same places concerning well-known 

 plants now familiar in all gardens. To say that a species will bear an ordinary winter is too 

 vague an assertion to be useful. To say that it is as hardy as an evergreen Oak or a Sweet Bay, 

 or a common Laurel, is intelligible to every one. The memoranda published by the Ilorticultiu-al 

 Society furnish data for such a comparison, which every reader can make for himself. Our limited 

 space only enables us to give the result of the inquiry as regards a few of the more intere?tiug 

 cases. 



Among the true Pines it may be regarded as certain that in all places, except the warm south 

 and south-western districts, the following are too tender to be worth planting, viz: Devoniana, 

 Grenvilloe, filifolia, Iciophijlla, apulcensis, Hartwcgi, jmtula, Tcocote, Russtlliaiia, canariensis, Mas- 

 soniana, Winccsteriana, Gordoniana, halepensh, .\ine71sis, Orizaba', occidentalis, and pseudo-ntrobus. 

 On the other hand, the hardy constitution of the following seems to be established, viz: Llavcana, 

 Gerardiana, tuberculata, palustris, radiata, macrocarpa, Bcnthainiana, Lindleyana, Fremontiana, 

 muricata, Montezumce, Ayacahuitc, cembroides, osieospjernia, Pcuce, pcrsica, and Brutia. With regard 

 to P. insiynis the evidence is conflicting; there is a circumstance, indeed, within our own know- 

 ledge which is inexplicable ; in the garden of the Ilorticultural Society were two good sized 

 specimens, one rather younger than the other; the former sheltered partially by a wall, the latter 

 as much or more sheltered by a conservatory; the younger died, the older sustained no injury: 

 80 again at Congleton, some are returned killed, others as having escaped ; at Ossington, where 

 the Sweet Bays perished, this plant was uninjured, and it is returned by Mr. Lowe, of Notting- 

 ham, where the frost was more intense than elsewhere, as being merely "injured." We incline 

 to regard the plant as hardy after it is eight or nine years old. 



Spruces the following seem h&viy, \\z: Abies Sinithiana, Morinda, orientalis, and all the ^ 



egon kinds; but A. Brunoniana is undoubtedly tender. )il 



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