WAY-SIDE HINTS. 137 



sistent with farm-economy, and much greater than 

 would be ordinarily accorded to the hawthorn ; be- 

 sides which, they are by no means proof against the 

 mischievous forays of cattle, who love nothing better 

 than to tangle their horns in a wall of soft green and 

 twist away the branchlets. The thorn-bearing shrubs 

 are by no means so inviting to their ventures of this 

 sort. 



I have not spoken of the holly of which many 

 charming hedges are to be found on English estates 

 because the British plant has not proved itself 

 wholly equal to our climate, and the American holly 

 (besides being somewhat inferior in glossiness and 

 density of foliage) has not yet been commonly intro- 

 duced even among nurserymen. In the way, how- 

 ever, of leafy screens for garden parterres and ter- 

 races, I have great hopes of what may yet be accom 

 plished with our Rhododendron and Kalmia latifolia. 

 The lank, lean habit of this latter under its ordinary 

 transplanting is no measure of its capacity for making 

 a full, rounded, dense wall of green. Whoever has 

 wandered over high-lying pasture-lands of New 

 England which have recently been cleared of their 

 forest growth, and has seen the wanton, luxuriant, 

 crowded tufts of Kalmia shooting from the old roots, 

 can form some measure of the capacity of the shrub 

 for good screen effects. The lank growth, too, of the 



