24 Home woods 



backed by all the learning of the colleges, were on one 

 side and a wood of our best native trees on the other, 

 the wood would certainly give a better return than could 

 be got from any labour or capital applied to the same 

 class of land in other ways. 



Evergreen woods for beauty. Even in the most fre- 

 quented lines of country we often see the ugliness 

 which results from neglecting to plant those most precious 

 gifts of the hills, the Mountain Pines. With few excep- 

 tions the best of these are the trees of northern Europe 

 and America, massed in serried armies on the mountains, 

 and grown on the hilly ground to a vast extent in central 

 Europe. The first good reason for planting evergreen 

 woods is their beauty. This we do not get in the kind 

 of pleasure-ground planting of which the object is to 

 grow each tree as a specimen dressed down to the ground 

 in a green ' crinoline '. It is only by grouping and 

 massing hardy evergreen trees that we can see their 

 highest beauty, which in most kinds is in the mast-like 

 stem. Nothing in the form of trees may so much influ- 

 ence the look of country as these evergreen trees. 



Shelter. In continental countries, where the winds 

 are powerful enough to destroy the crops, shelter belts 

 of evergreen trees are a great defence ; much more so 

 in our wind-shorn coast land we have reason to seek 

 shelter. If, owing to the vast length of exposed coast, 

 we neglect to give shelter, the trees and shrubs are cut 

 off as by giant shears above the walls. But where we 

 have the evergreen wood (beginning with wind-resisting 

 shrubs, working up to the higher trees) we have shelter, 

 as at Bodorgan in Anglesey, on one of our most wind- 

 shorn coasts. 



Planting poor land. In dealing with poor land the 



