H4 Norcliffe. 



enriched with a collection of trees which, so far as our 

 immediate neighbourhood is concerned, stands quite 

 alone. The oak and the silver birch, the lime, the 

 sycamore, the chesnut, and the stately beech, chequer 

 with their shadows the sward of most of the parks that 

 lie within a circuit of twenty miles. There are pine- 

 trees also, and Araucarias, in probably every one of 

 them, but it is only here at Norcliffe that, while the 

 former kinds are not absent, the coniferae form a grand 

 and characteristic feature. Of trees of the pine, fir, and 

 cedar kind, there have been brought together, at this 

 charming place, upwards of forty different species and 

 varieties, many of them represented by very numerous 

 examples ; and the greater portion having been planted 

 for more than thirty years, their fine and symmetrical 

 forms, and peculiar habits of foliage, -are developed in 

 most cases excellently. The most curious are the 

 Deodara, like a vegetable fountain, and the Chili Pine, 

 Araucaria imbricata, the branches of which look like 

 scaly serpents ; and the most interesting, perhaps, the 

 Black Spruce, Abies nigra, a splendid specimen (at 

 Quarry Bank) thirty feet high, with many pinnacles, the 

 deciduous Cypress or Taxo'dium, and the Wellingto'nia, 

 that in its native country attains an age exceeding that 

 of the Pyramids. There is no taller Deodara in the 

 district than one of the specimens to be seen here; 

 there is also a handsome Norway Spruce, Abies excelsa, 

 sixty feet high, and with the top covered with cones, 



