150 ON THE DISTOSING OF EVERGREEN TREES AND SHRUBS. 



ore-ground, it may strongly be recommended, while collecting pe- 

 rennial foliage of every species, to permit each variety of the beautiful 

 ilex to predominate. Single or combined, from elegance of shape, 

 delicacy of leaf, and duration of mantling, the ilex constitutes an 

 embellishment almost unparalleled, yet too frequently neglected. Of 

 faster growth than the deciduous oak, it attains expansion competent 

 to the gratification of the painter's eye, with not less certainty, in the 

 ordinary calculation of life's duration, than to please and profit pos- 

 terity. It should, then, on various accounts, abound in the proximity 

 of a decorated mansion, blended with masses of bay, backed by 

 cypress, yew, and pinaster, and faced with laurel, laurestinus, Por- 

 tugal laurel, privet, phillyrea, arbutus, with other flowering or 

 variegated shrubs. 



In similar relative situation, but in prominent advance from trees 

 and unblossomed shrubs, flowering evergreens should invariably rank. 

 Defying ''the icy fang and churlish chiding of the winter's wind," 

 the gay, cheering, precocious laurestinus anticipates the lingering 

 arrival of an English spring. Tenacious of florage and permanently 

 retentive of foliated decoration, it is entitled to numerical predo- 

 minance over every blossoming shrub. By seasonable intervention 

 and flowering profusion, it compensates for temporary diminution of 

 ornament, in other component ingredients of a shrubbery, thus trans- 

 ferring to nipping winter's gloom the exhilarating semblance of 

 summer's embellishment. Productive of such interesting impression 

 in pleasing the eye, it certainly merits conspicuousness by prominent 

 position. 



The arbutus is a shrub peculiarly elegant and eligible, from pe- 

 rennial decoration, rapid growth, and superior beauty in shape and 

 tint of leaf, from delicate blossom, and glowing berry. If suffered to 

 remain unpruned, by gaining height, it becomes hollow and leafless 

 beneath, retaining, like other evergreens, only two years' leaves, 

 except about Midsummer, when the third years' are annexed, some 

 weeks previous to the decay of the first. If not surrounded by ever- 

 greens more stunted in growth, for concealment of its lower leafless 

 branches, it should biennially be deprived of a few long shoots, by 

 application of the pruning-knife, the shears being calculated to 

 render a shrub hideously cabbage-poled. Any shrub judiciously 

 pruned will retain resemblance of its natural form. Artificial treat- 



