48 SOME PINES 



' grue ' mischance that has happened to the present 

 writer more often than it boots to record. 



XIV 



There has been discussion of late in the Field and 

 other journals about the Corsican pine (Pinus 

 laricio), whether it is immune or not from 

 rabbits. Now there is not a green thing which rabbits 

 will not gnaw when it is first planted. I believe that if 

 there were but a single rabbit in the parish and one were to 

 plant out aloes of painted tin, such as bedeck dismally the 

 environs of hydropathic establishments and marine hotels 

 of the baser sort, that solitary rabbit would whet his teeth 

 upon them. Rabbits are rodents, and if rodent animals 

 don't keep constantly gnawing, their teeth grow to 

 immoderate length. Consequently, if there is nothing in 

 the place more esculent than Corsican pines, rabbits will 

 set to at these. But they won't persevere ; they will not 

 feed on them, but rather will migrate elsewhere. For 

 there is something in the Corsican pine, not poisonous to 

 rabbits probably, but distinctly unpalatable; a property 

 peculiar to Corsicans, for the Austrian pine, which 

 Gadlicher considered to be merely a variety of the 

 Corsican, the accursed rabbit will devour to the last 

 needle. 



Anybody who is in doubt about the rabbit-resisting 

 property of the Corsican pine should visit these extensive 

 sandhills near Holkham and Wells which the Earl of 

 Leicester has been planting up for the last fifty years. 

 Here may be seen many miles of seaside woodland, 

 composed of four species of conifer Austrian, Corsican, 

 pinaster, and Scots pine. Not only has the Corsican 



