FEBRUARY 29 



sees it in the coast pines, but far more often is 

 the beauty of those most beautiful of all trunks, 

 the beech boles and the stems of birches, 

 greater if veiled by a foreground of green. 

 Box is not hospitable to close neighbours, but 

 away from it a bit, where the dogwoods have 

 tipped the foils with which it fights the cold 

 with the round buttons which are to conquer 

 the whole world by-and-by, the smaller ever- 

 greens must be set, so that the ground be 

 covered by them. The English ivy makes an 

 unexcelled carpet. It will grow thus even in 

 the most inhospitable climates, if the stock 

 be taken from plants already adjusted to the 

 surroundings. The common myrtle is exceed- 

 ingly hardy and, once entrenched, will grow and 

 prosper and ripen with the years until its rich- 

 ness becomes proverbial. Thyme is another 

 winter carpet well worth everybody's while to 

 plant, so readily does it grow, so dense is its 

 green and bronzed foliage and so homelike is 

 its scent. The most beautiful of our native 

 evergreen trailers or creepers, the lycopodium 

 and the exquisite partridge-berry, refuse domes- 

 tication. 



I put down the foot-rule, and the cork of 



