viii EDITOR'S PREFACE 



When you travel over roads in the wooded hills you come 

 now and then to an opening margined with evergreens. You 

 stop, and enter the place with reverence. You feel a mystery 

 in it. Instinctively you expect strange bird-notes. You sit on 

 a mound, in a quiet reflective mood. You note that some one 

 has built a cooking-fire in the place; the stones still show the 

 marks, and ends of old embers are left. You see evidences 

 that others beside yourself have worshipped there; this gives 

 the spot a human interest. You want to transport this quiet 

 retreat to your own estate. 

 . But perhaps you have no extensive premises to develop. 

 / Yet you are interested in the trees you see here and there. You 

 would plant two or three trees in your small area, hoping that 

 they may attain something of the character you see in the 

 wood. They will aid to give your enclosure seclusion. They will 

 provide greenery in the winter. You will note how they respond 

 to the changing seasons, being interested all the more, perhaps, 

 because the response is not violent. The interest does not 

 inhere in showy and transient bloom. The soft growth of the 

 spring shoots is as good to you as flowers. Indeed, few flowers 

 are more beautiful than the annual tender new growth of 

 several of the firs and many of the sprucesJ 



Or perhaps you have only a small cit/^space unadapted to 

 evergreens, or even no land at all. In that case, the range of the 

 native evergreen landscape is yours to explore and enjoy as you 

 will; and you will want to know the kinds, that your apprecia- 

 tion may have direction. 



Although to the unpractised eye most evergreens look alike, 

 yet there are clear distinctions in leaves, and the identification 

 of them cultivates the discriminating faculties. The cones and 

 berries are a never-failing source of interest. Specially so are 

 the seed-bearing cones of pines and spruces and the other true 



