64 
and planted out, to grow in peace until the next Christmas. 
This delightful method is hardly feasible for our large cities, but 
possibly it can be imitated in the country. 
“Trees, shrubs and herbs” the appeal reads; shrubs are 
perennial and picking their flowers does not kill them, but we 
usually have to break off the flowers with a length of branch 
and leaves, and this has the effect of pruning. Now though 
judicious pruning benefits a plant, overpruning weakens it and 
injudicious pruning, or pruning done at the wrong season is also 
bad for it. It is holly and mountain laurel that our Boston 
Society * calls upon us especially to protect as they are both 
slow-growing shrubs, and the poor laurel has to undergo two 
attacks annually, one for the flowers in summer and one for the 
evergreen leaves at Christmas time. We rely upon the same 
Society to inform us if we should refrain from purchasing pussy- 
willow, flowering dogwood, azaleas, and black-alder—the scarlet 
berries of the latter are very beautiful in early winter, though it 
lacks the leaves of its cousin the holly. The ground pine is 
said to be in danger from being torn up wholesale for Christmas 
green, and we have already been called upon in the Boston 
Transcript to refrain from purchasing the ee offered for 
sale in quantity in the streets in early sprin 
The leaflet I have just quoted is no. I ce. our Plant Protection 
Society and is written by Robert T. Jackson. The herbs which 
he deems in need of protection are sabbatia and fringed gentian, 
but he considers the following species so abundant as not to be 
in danger: marsh marigold, iris, aster, golden rod, violet, except 
the crowfoot (which is that? [%o/a pvdata?) and houstonia. I 
take exception to including the houstonia in this list, because one 
has to dig it up in — root and all—it is nearly impossible 
to pick it flower by flow 
The maiden-hair o. Mr Jackson tells us, has been nearly 
eradicated in this vicinity—think what a loss this is to us all— 
I did not even know that it formerly grew here. But I have 
* For fastens in regard to the Society for the Protection of Sace: Plants, or 
its leaflets, application may be made to Miss Maria E. Carter, Curator of Herbarium, 
Boston Society of Natural History, Berkeley Street, Boston, Mass. 
- 
