154 TREE-PLANTING. 



parid). This beautiful deciduous tree produces 

 numerous fragrant white blossoms during the months 

 of May and June, which change into a profusion of 

 scarlet berries in October. The tree is perhaps seen 

 to its greatest perfection in the Highlands of Scotland, 

 with its terminal shoots bending beneath the weight 

 of scarlet berries. Being very hardy it grows freely in 

 cool soils at a great altitude, the exposure of which 

 would kill many more tender trees. It grows rapidly 

 during the first eight or ten years of its life, though it 

 never reaches a large size. As a hedgerow tree it is 

 highly ornamental, rising with a shapely head which 

 is never disfigured by the wind. 



It is propagated from the berries, which ripen in 

 autumn, and are then collected and put into a pit, 

 mixed with sand or light earth, and allowed to remain 

 until the second winter, or early in the second spring, 

 when they are sown, and so disposed that they strike 

 two inches asunder. At two years they require trans- 

 planting into nursery lines, where they may remain 

 another two years, and will then be ready to plant out 

 permanently, or to be replanted in a greater space to 

 become larger trees, so as to produce a more imme- 

 diate effect when placed in their destined stations at a 

 future time. 



There are several varieties, one of the most beau- 

 tiful of which is the weeping mountain ash, which 

 when grafted upon an ordinary stock forms an elegant 

 pendent tree. Peculiar kinds can only be accurately 

 reproduced by grafting, which is the course recom- 

 mended when the object in view is to secure some 

 special variety. 



The Service Tree (Pyrus aria). This species is 



