A. NORDM.\NNIANA 87 



regard for any of those little thermometric irregulari- 

 ties of the calendar, in the shape of late spring frosts 

 or Etesian winds. 



Neither are they hypercritical sticklers, like so many 

 of their kind, in a choice of soil or in aspect of position. 

 In short they accept cheerfully, in happy-go-lucky 

 frame of mind, what their tutelary gods send them, 

 be it situation assigned or visitation of elements. 

 They hold better timber testimonials than the 

 generality of the Abies Family, and they — the Silver 

 Firs — ^we are constrained to say, do not hold as high 

 a character for popularity among timber buyers as 

 many of their owners would wish. The complaints 

 urged against them are that they are generally of too 

 large a size to push, move, or compete with on the 

 saw bench. Another drawback alleged against them 

 is that their rather porous propensities make them 

 adapted for indoor rather than outdoor use in their 

 final careers. 



As, then, they have been acclaimed as growing 

 trees (i) weatherproof, and (2) picturesque, (3) of 

 accommodating disposition to soils and sites, (4) as of 

 fairly useful timber properties, the wonder grows ; 

 why is it that our horizons, our backgrounds, our 

 middle distances, and our foregrounds are not more 

 often streaked with their dark masses, looming out 

 against skylines ? The answer may be that about 

 the times they should have been or might have been 

 planted, say, in the seventies or eighties (they were 

 introduced about 1850), to produce such effects, 

 ornamental tree-planting was neither a favourite nor 

 fashionable craze of the land-owning confraternit3\ 

 Like Gallio, the lordly possessors of vast domains 

 in that day were not caring very much just then 

 about such things. 



In the forties of the last century it evidently was 

 more a matter of concern with them, and in the last 



