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planted closely for timber belts and hedge shelter for farm lands. 

 A very good tree for renovating exhausted land and improving poor 

 soil. Also a bee-plant ; one of the easiest trees to grow on bare sand, 

 where it will maintain its hold in hollows or drifts, though requiring 

 more mineral aliment than Pinus Silvestris. 



ALMOND TREE (Pinus Amygdalus, J. Hooker, and Amygdalus 

 communis, Linne). From Caucasus. Resists drought well, and 

 yields a valuable crop. The cost of gathering the crop in South 

 Europe is about 20 per cent, of its market value. The flower 

 affords to bees, early in the season, nectar and pollen. There exists 

 hard and soft-shelled varieties of both the sweet and bitter almonds. 

 Can even be grown on sea shores. 



BAMBOO-REED (Arundo Donax, Linne) . The tall, evergreen* 

 lasting bamboo-reed of Northern Europe, South-Western Asia, and 

 Northern Africa, is fairly hardy, and attains a height of 20 feet 

 and more. One of the most important plants of its class for quickly 

 producing scenic effect in picturesque plantations, also for inter- 

 cepting almost at once, the view of unsightly objects, and for giving 

 early shelter. The canes are used for fishing-rods, for light props 

 and various utensils. Easily transplanted at any season. Rows or 

 belts of it intercept sewage or exsiccate stagnant drainage. Pasture 

 animals like to browse on the young foliage. Dr. Bancroft, in 

 Queensland, proved this plant a splendid "stayby"in seasons of 

 drought, and recommends reserve fields of it regularly to be kept. 



THE CAROB TREE, synonym Locust Bean (Ceratonia Siliqua, 

 Linne). One of the best, if not the best, shelter tree for this 

 State . Indigenous of the Eastern Mediterranean regions, attains 

 a height of 40ft. to 50ft., and resists drought, hot winds, succeeds 

 well in all kinds of soils rocky, gravelly, hilly, but thrives more 

 particularly on calcareous sub- soil, and on deep fertile loams. 

 Would grow in this country at all altitudes. Splendid specimens of 

 it grow near Geraldton and at New Norcia, and also at Pinjarra, 

 yielding annually two to three hundred-weights and more of 

 saccharine pods or St. John's bread; of great value as stock food, 

 and worth for that purpose, when crushed, 5s. to 6s. a cwt. 

 The exportation of the pods from Cyprus, Crete, and Syria, is very 

 large. In most of the Mediterranean countries horses, cattle, and 

 pigs are almost exclusively fed, during the dry months of the year, 

 upon the pods, which contain 50 per cent, of sugar and gum. The 

 meat of sheep and pigs is greatly improved in flavour by this food. 

 At Gibraltar, Malta, and in Egypt, the fine commissariat mules 

 are fed with a mixture of Carob beans and pulse, to horses and 

 cattle 61 bs. a day are given of the crushed pods, raw or boiled, with 

 or without chaff. 



For a wind-break the trees should be planted in double or 

 single rows, 12ft. to 15ft. apart, when their evergreen branches 

 will entwine and resist the most fierce wind. The tree is very 

 symmetrical in growth, and highly ornamental in paddocks, where 

 they afford in copses or singly a good shelter for stock. As a road 



