JANUARY 3 



when we would fain devote these nooks to choicer 

 exotics, the ground is a clotted labyrinth of roots, 

 and the skin of the stems is so heavily charged with 

 silex as quickly to blunt the edge of the best tempered 

 steel. 



Of all the fine berry-bearing shrubs that have been 

 introduced of late years from the far East, none sur- 

 passes none, methinks, excels our native holly in 

 beauty. It is well on to three centuries since John 

 Evelyn sounded its praise with a profusion of italics 

 that must have kept the compositor on the alert : 



' Above all the natural Greens which enrich our home-born 

 store, there is none certainly to be compar'd to the Agrifolium 

 (or Acuifolium rather), our Holly, insomuch as I have often 

 wonder'd at our curiosity after f orreign Plants, and expensive 

 Difficulties, to the neglect of the culture of this vulgar, but 

 incomparable tree. ... Is there under Heaven a more glorious 

 and refreshing object of the kind, than an impregnable Hedge 

 of near three hundred foot in length, nine foot high, and Jive in 

 diameter ; which I can show in my poor Gardens at any time 

 of the year, glitt'ring with its arm'd and vernish'd leaves 1 the 

 taller Standards at orderly distances, blushing with their 

 natural Coral. It mocks at the rudest assaults of the Weather, 

 Beasts or Hedge-breakers.' 



In the next paragraph he says ' there is also of the 

 White-berried and a Golden-variegated, which proceeds 

 from no difference in the species and Naturae lusu,' 

 a sentence which, I cannot but suspect, has given rise 

 to the tradition of a white-berried holly. Evelyn is 

 treating here of the foliage, and probably wrote ' white- 

 berried' for 'white-leaved' or 'white- variegated.' In 

 a later paragraph he deals with the berries, 'of which,' 



