252 A HUNDRED YEARS 



macrocarpa) does so very well, I should have the best of 

 hopes of the Monterey pine also, because they both come, 

 I am told, from the same locality in California. 



My latest craze is cutting out spaces, enclosing them 

 with six-foot fences (deer, roe, and rabbit proof), and 

 planting them with nearly every rare exotic tree and 

 shrub which I hear succeeds in Devon, Cornwall, and 

 the West of Ireland. I think I may venture to say that 

 I have been fairly successful, and nothing would give 

 me greater pleasure than to have a visit of inspection 

 from some of the members of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society. I fear I must confess to feelings of exultation 

 when I visit that charming collection in the temperate 

 house of Kew, and assure myself that I can grow a great 

 many of its contents better in the open air, in the far 

 north, than they can be grown at Kew under glass. 



What a proud and happy day it was for me, about 

 fourteen years ago, when Mr. Bean of Kew honoured me 

 with a visit, and I had the pleasure of showing him my 

 Tricuspidarias, Embothriums, and Eucryphias, my small 

 trees of Ahutilon vitifoUum, my palms, loquats, Drimys, 

 Sikkim rhododendrons, my giant Olearias, Senecios, 

 Veronicas, Leptospernums, my Metrosideros and 

 Mitrarias, etc. ! I have, too, some of the less common 

 varieties. One of them is a nice specimen of Podocarpus 

 totara, from which the Maoris used to make their war 

 canoes holding one hundred men, and I have Dicksonia 

 antarctica, raised from spores ripened in Arran. My 

 Cordyline Australis are all from seed ripened at Scourie, 

 in the north of Sutherland. The Billardiera longifoha, 

 from Tasmania, with its wonderful blue berries, is a 



