6o PINES 



planting them in quantity away from their naturalized 

 or native soil, where they have set up for themselves 

 an individuality of their own, and in accordance with 

 the requirements of the various regions in which they 

 have become settlers ? Despite this inference on 

 the contrary side, some of such varieties have survived 

 their transportation well enough to justify extended 

 attempts, and our repeating of invitations to "At 

 Homes " here. 



P. Laricio, The Corsican Pine. — 



I wandered lonely where the Pine Trees made 

 Against the bitter East their barricade. 



Whittier. 



It is now some seventy years since our ancestors 

 planted Corsican Pines, and euphemistically wrote 

 of them as the Altissima Pines from Corsica. Though 

 not approaching in grandeur of size this tree in its 

 native land, the trees here have attained a greater 

 height than any other Pines, including the Scots Pine, 

 planted in those days. To give our own opinion upon 

 the tree, we should sum up the situation abruptly 

 with the remark that w^hile we all like them intensely, 

 the rabbits with an equal intensity dislike them. 



We should like — by w^ay of an obiter dictum — 

 to recount a little homely experience on this alleged 

 distaste of the Corsican Pine on the part of the rabbit. 

 Some time since, from where I wTite, when rabbits 

 were thick upon the ground, as thick as Milton's 

 " autumnal leaves that strew^ed the brooks in Val- 

 lombrosa," a young Corsican was planted for the sole 

 purpose of offering temptation at a spot where there 

 passed and repassed, in numbers considerable, a host 

 of hungry rodent rabbits, in quest of evening meal 

 and evening drink. 



Rabbits, it was generally supposed, like "many 

 another frail specimen of the animal kingdom, were 



