102 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



flowers as this. Much white and lavender will bind it in nice 

 fashion to the colors of the other flowers, whatever those may 

 be; and an effect of supreme brilliance is always gained by the 

 use of scarlet in the right quantity in the right place. 



I had been thinking only of the most familiar tree-crop, that 

 of fruit, and thus far had I WTitten when my eye fell upon the 

 words of an authority on the nut tree — Dr. Robert T. Morris. 

 The grafted shagbark hickory, in this writer's opinion, should 

 take the place of "short-lived willows and beetle-bait elms." 

 The Japanese walnut or heartnut is another tree recommended 

 as a substitute for the Carolina poplar, though I myself should 

 fear the effect of the large strange leaf of this tree where land- 

 scape composition comes in for consideration. But certainly 

 when, to use Dr. Morris's excellent and very modern phrase, 

 the " merger value " of trees is realized (and it should be realized 

 everywhere — the planting of trees for beauty, fruit, and wood), 

 there will be freer use of such things as he recommends in 

 pungent phrase and sentence. The pawpaw and the Japanese 

 persimmon are two trees for the decoration of the small place, 

 and the heartnut, mentioned above, is green long after first 

 frost, though the buyer is warned not to accept the variety 

 Sieboldii when securing his trees, because the nuts of this are 

 not so fine as those of the Japanese. Imagine, however, the sight 

 of the persimmon after its leaves are fallen, all hung with those 

 fruits of indescribable brilliance — an effect of color not unlike 

 that said to be so telling of festoons of scarlet peppers hung 

 to dry against the cream-white adobe houses of the villages of 

 New Mexico and Arizona. 



Now confessing to much ignorance in the matter of trees, 

 there are aspects of them which, even in that ignorance, I have 

 always noticed. Of one or two of these I should like to speak, 

 but first I must say that one of my most humiliating — and 



