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Kew. During the summer of 1912, most of the plants made leading 
growths 15 to 18 inches long, some of them 24 to 28 inches. The 
susceptibility to spring frosts is likely to be greater in a flat, low- 
lying situation like Kew, which is scarcely above the level of high 
tides, than in elevated ones; nor are the frosts’so likely to affect 
plants above 6 feet in height. The old trees in the pinetum at Kew, 
which are the finest in the country at the present time, show no 
signs of having been checked by frost, the stems being straight and 
the tallest now 41 feet high. 
arix occidentalis is undoubtedly the finest of all larches. Sargent 
gives its maximum height as 250 feet, and Mr. Elwes mentions a 
tree in Montana said to have been 233 feet high and 24 feet in girth 
near the ground. But from personal observation, neither Elwes nor 
Henry seem to have found trees larger than 180 feet in height with 
a trunk girthing 15 feet at 5 feet from the ground. It is much to 
be hoped that so magnificent a tree will succeed generally in the 
British Isles. The old trees at Kew are planted in some of the 
driest and sandiest ground on the place; the new plantation, 
however, is on soil of a more loamy nature. I recently saw in the 
new Forestry Station founded by the Department of Agriculture in 
Ireland at Avondale, co. Wicklow, a plantation that had been made 
of about 1000 trees. Mr. A. C. Forbes was not pleased with their 
is i Sed, certainly it did not compare with that of common or 
apanese larch, but at Avondale the young plantations have to get 
away from a thick mat of grass, and it is possible that when (or if) 
Soe able to overtop and subdue this, they may show better 
results, 
W. J.B. 
eee of the true pitch pine (Pinus palustris) had its top broken off. 
his tree was about 13 feet high and consisted of one stem about 
The last tree was also uprooted of the well-known group of very 
picturesque Weymouth pines (Pinus Strobus), which stood in the 
thododendron Dell on the left-hand side of the entrance to 
the Bamboo Garden. This group of pines, originally four in number, 
was much beloved of artists ; their ivy-clad trunks and gaunt limbs 
must figure in may hundreds of pictures of various kinds. On this 
account they were left as long as possible, but one of them was - 
own down ina storm about three years since and two others had 
since become so insecure that they were taken down also. 
_The oldest and largest Crataegus nigra in Kew, growing in the 
horn Avenue, was rent in two, and one of the curious circular 
groan. oF Pace near the Lily Pond, was snapped off midway up 
6 : 
