DOGWOOD. PRIVET AND BOX 



1017 



FRUIT CAPSULES OF BOX. 



flies, and beetles are 

 assiduous visitors. The 

 fruit is globular — a 

 shining black " berry " 

 enclosing in its purple 

 pulp a single two-celled 

 stone. If bullfinches 

 are anywhere in the 

 neighbourhood they 

 will be sin"e to visit a 

 Privet hedge some time 

 in the course of the 

 winter, searching for 

 the fruit. 



THE BOX 



Really a shrub, the 

 Box makes some small 

 pretence to being a 

 tree, though not with 

 any conspicuous suc- 

 cess, as in the wood- 

 land undergrowth on 

 Box Hill in Surrey. 

 Their lanky stems, 

 129 



generally several in a group, straggling into and 

 among the overgrowing Yew or Beech, give the 

 unpression of " leggincss," as a gardener would de- 

 scribe it, rather than of a sustained standard growth. 

 Many of these reaching a lieight of fifteen or twenty 

 feet, with a greatest diameter of about six inches, 

 densely branched and foliaged, but with httle of 

 defined shape in the crown, serve mainly to deepen 

 the shade in which they hve and seem to thrive. 

 Out in the open, with light reaching them on e\'ery 

 side, they fonn by preference dense rounded clumps, 

 stems and branches ccjmpletely hidden liy the close- 

 set evergreen fohage. 



The bark is yellowish and smooth with a ten- 

 dency to scahness. The buds are scarcely discern- 

 ible. The twigs are four-angled. The leaves, 

 under an inch in length, are oval, not pointed 

 but frequently notched at the apex. They are 

 pohshed above, of a deep full green, matt beneath 

 and paler. In texture they are hard and leathery. 

 The secondaries, branching from the midrib, are 

 straight and parallel, but obscure. The series of 



FKUIT OF PKIVET. 



