EVERGREEN BHAUTY. 73 



this symmetrical beauty. From the full-grown 

 trees (page 224) the side branches mostly fall, 

 leaving a trunk still more or less erect, and 

 marked by its reddish hue, and with spreading 

 heads formed by twisted branches and irregularity 

 of boughs and leaves. Mr. Short has admirably 

 portrayed the Scotch Pine as it is mostly seen 

 in the forest. His drawing is a picture, the 

 central beauty of which consists of the figures of 

 two specimens of Pinus sylvestris. One glance 

 will suffice to show that these trees are eminently 

 calculated to please, as Gilpin expresses it, ' the 

 picturesque eye.' Of the Scotch Fir he says, 

 ' For myself, I admire its foliage, both the colour 

 of the leaf and its mode of growth. Its ramifica- 

 tion, too, is irregular and beautiful, and not unlike 

 that of the Stone Pine, which it resembles also in 

 the easy sweep of its stem, and likewise in the 

 colour of the bark, which is commonly, as it 

 attains age, of a rich reddish-brown. The Scotch 

 Fir, indeed, in its stripling state, is less an object 

 of beauty. Its pointed and spiry shoots, during 

 the first years of its growth, are formal ; and yet 

 I have sometimes seen a good contrast produced 



