2038 
elevated, principally for the display of ae from Asiatic 
Russia and the adjoining countries, the plants being grouped 
eee cally. There are also beds with recat es of the 
principal natural families of certain biological types an 
aie interesting plants, on the “iale eee worked 
into the landscape. Very prettily laid out are some groups 
along a sluggish watercourse, more or less overshadowed by 
trees, and given up partly to a ee of plants characteristic 
of the flora of St. Petersburg and partly to systematic groups, 
including a large number of aed or aquatic and sub- 
eee plants. One can see that they at home and har- 
monize in their ecological requirements ee the wood, towards 
the ne of which they are placed. If Peter von Haven’s state- 
ment that aeorrd Island in his day was mostly covered 
with a spruce wood is correct, as it very likely may be, it is clear 
Garden. Of conifers only the native species (spruce, common 
pine and larch), Larix sibirica and L. dahurica, and Thuya 
occidentalis seem to thrive well. The date trees of the 
Arboretum are deciduous, as for instance limes (mostly Tilia 
cordata, or as they are abe led 7 aon poplars, eee 
elms, willows, maples (Acer platanoides), bird-cherries, moun 
ashes, etc. The ground underneath the trees is covered with 
fairly luxuriant herbaceous vegetation, which in the small ns 
ings forms typical northern meadows. Avenues are cut through 
the wood, and shrubs have hess planted alongside and in other 
places, some of which are doing exceedingly well, as for 
instance Rubus nutkaensis, poe alba, Lonicera tatarica, several 
species of Crataegus (particularly C. sanguinea) and Cotoneaster, 
Spiraea sorbifolia, Caragana frutescens, etc 
No great variety or brilliant effect can be expected from a 
garden in the latitude of the Shetlands, where the snowdrop and 
the hazel do not begin to flower until towards the last week of 
April or even the beginning of May and frosts set in usually in 
the first week in October. Yet the aspect of the Garden and 
especially of the wooded portion with its rich young green is 
very pleasant indeed in the long days of the early summer and 
