ORNAMENTAL PRUNING. 291 



exposed situations, whereas in sheltered sites the defect 

 was that their branches spread too little. 



An ornamental tree, especially in its young state, 

 should be fairly and evenly balanced, and equally 

 rooted on all sides : this is not a mere matter of taste, 

 but a sine qua non in all tree-culture, for unless duly 

 attended to in youth, in old age it often suffers to de- 

 struction and premature extinction. In the culture of 

 ornamental trees, the production of perfect individual 

 specimens ought to be the primary object, and if this 

 were so, then there would be something as a rule for 

 pruning ; whereas, without such object in view, there 

 can be nothing to guide and direct in the work but 

 fancy, wild or tame, as the case may be. As an 

 illustration of this, a lady said she did not like the 

 larch, either young or old, because when young, as well 

 as old, it was naked and bare in winter, and in mature 

 years it lacked that rounded cloudy top so admirable 

 in the Scots fir (the native Highland pine of Scotland). 



Gilpin, in his c Forest Scenery,' says in respect to 

 the silver fir, " it is ugly in the extreme ; " and he 

 scarcely finds a place in the wide world sufficiently 

 unworthy of it. Now, with all deference to those who 

 hold such views and sentiments, we venture to say that 

 in its own place the silver fir is as grand and worthy 

 a tree as the woodland can boast of, and over which 

 the forest may with acclamation clap its hands. 



Any one with a landscape picture before him of the 

 native mountains of Switzerland will usually observe 

 the larch as a prominent object, and its thin, sharp, 

 spear- like tops, pointed, jagged, and weather-beaten, 

 betoken the adaptation of means to ends ; for in such 

 exposures, with clouds of snowstorm and tempest to 

 weather and outlive, no tree known to us would so 



