278 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



height and prickliness explain its name of knee-holly. Brakes 

 and hedgerows on chalk soil are also the chief home of the 

 privet. Privet in a wild state is but a half-hearted evergreen. 

 It is often not much more thickly clothed with leaves at mid- 

 winter than the bramble, which is half-evergreen in our mild 

 English winters. Privet leaves last through the winter in 

 better heart and colour than the stained and tattered 

 bramble sprays ; but they have little of the glistening 

 luxuriance at Christmas- time which distinguishes the true 

 evergreens. 



