BROAD-LEAVED EVERGREENS 165 



reputation to maintain. For one hundred dollars you can get 

 a car load of Rhododendron maximum of all grades and sizes from 

 two to eight feet and there will be from forty to two hundred 

 plants in it. The freight to New England from Pennsylvania 

 collecting grounds is twenty-two to forty dollars a car. 



But there! Why prate about mere dollars when there are 

 inspiring effects we can study! 



HOW ENGLAND EXCELS US 



How book notions change when one sees the real things! I 

 was brought up to believe that England has the best climate in the 

 world for evergreens, and consequently it is folly to try to rival 

 her. The first part may be true, but the second is not. We can 

 probably never attain more than 90 per cent, of English luxuriance, 

 but we have a greater variety of native species. For example, we 

 can never expect to speak of rhododendrons in our woods as 

 "weeds," or game coverts of English laurel as "evergreen rubbish," 

 as William Robinson justly does in criticizing certain English 

 excesses. On the other hand, do you know what the English call 

 broad-leaved evergreens? They often call the peat-loving mem- 

 bers of the group "American plants," for they have in mind 

 chiefly mountain laurel and the two rhododendrons which grow 

 wild in our Northern States. 



Of the forty-nine kinds we can grow in the North, twenty-two 

 grow wild in this very region, and ten more are native to an allied 

 climate (that of Japan), while only eight are native to Europe. 



HOW WE CAN EXCEL ENGLAND 



The only place where we can reproduce practically all the 

 English effects with English material is Oregon, for that is about 



