432 



.TOUENAL OF HOHTICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GAKDENEE. 



i Jaae 3, 1875. 



spreads rapidly, and becomes the good shader we commend 

 it for. 



The Evergreen Oak does not well bear transplanting, and 

 Mr. Kobson some years since published in our pages — " I 

 believe the most snccessfnl results have been accomplished by 

 planting in May, and even at the end of that month ; but I 

 unly give this advice on the authority of a friend, ss I have 



not personally transplanted at that time. Young trees are also 

 recommended. If the weather is dry and bright some shading 

 is desirable for a few days, and a shower of rain will work 

 wonders ; by the end of summer the tree will have assumed 

 its proper costume, and all will go on well. If I had a planta- 

 tion of this tree to make in the autumn I would be disposed 

 to adopt the most primitive mode of all, and that would be to 



put in the acora wtere the tree was to grow, and if the soil 

 and subsoil were all right I would leave the rest in a great 

 measure to Nature." 



In the excellent and accurate little volume nublished by The 

 Christian Knowledge Soeietv on " The Forest Trees of Britain," 

 by the Eev. C. A. .Tohns, it is noted that the Evergreen Oak 

 is a fellow-countryman of the Latin classic poets, from whom 

 it hag received frequent and honourable mention. Even with 

 us it attains a considerable size ; but in the milder climates of 

 Italy, Spain, &c., it becomes a large tree, and reaches an age 

 equal to that of some ot onr most venerable Oaks. Hence it 

 not unfrequently acquired an historical interest, and for this 



reason perhaps, more than for its picturesque beauty, it was 

 made the theme of poetic song. The Eoman naturalist Pliny, 

 who flourished in the first century of the Christian era, men- 

 tions a tree growing in the Vatican which claimed a higher 

 antiquity than Rome itself. It had brazen letters in the 

 ancient Etruscan characters affixed to its trunk, from which 

 it would appear that, before the Roman name was known, it 

 was a sacred tree. Its arro must therefore have been eight 

 hundred years at least. The shape of the leaf varies greatly 

 in different individuals, and even not unfrequently on the same 

 tree, being sometimes scarcely notched at all, at other times 

 deeply serrated, nnd at others quite quickly. It is this last 



