CHAPTER IV 



THE GREATER EVERGREEN TREES OF THE NORTHERN 

 FOREST 



I HAVE shown reasons for the planting of evergreen 

 woods: for shelter, profit, use of poor lands, rapid 

 growth, varied uses, and for their beauty in the land- 

 scape. The man who does not love the woodland and 

 the tree will never make a beautiful country place ; for 

 the questions which cluster round the house itself are 

 as nothing compared with what we have to face if we 

 wish to get the best the ground may give us. We have 

 now to think of the chief question in planting, the choice 

 of stately and first-rate trees ; kings of the northern ever- 

 green forest they should be. From many points of view, 

 the planting of evergreen woods is an important one, 

 and, from the number of merely new trees in lists, the 

 question is not always simple. We have a few hardy 

 evergreen trees which everybody plants, but so many 

 trees have been introduced, possessing good qualities 

 in their own country, that people are apt to plant things 

 which can never become in Britain timber trees of any 

 value, however well they may look in nursery rows, or 

 isolated in the pleasure ground with perhaps a dozen 

 loads of good loam under each tree. The mountains of 

 Europe give us the best trees for our islands, needing 

 no special soil or care, and with them thrive the trees 

 of northern Asia, and even southern Europe and Asia 

 Minor, with its noble Cedars of Lebanon. There is 



