EVERGREEN VEGETATION IN NORTHUMBERLAND. 67 
The site of this noble establishment being on a southerly slope, 
fully exposed to the sun, a continual alternation of thawing and 
freezing, freezing and thawing, 
must be going on, during the 
severe frosts that so often follow our great snow-storms. 
In highland or upland situations, near the hills or moors, the 
snow falls much thicker, the frost is often somewhat less 
intense, but is more continuous, and not nearly so lable to be 
broken by mid-day thaws, followed in their turn by more biting 
cold than ever, in the evening. 
This steady frost and deep snow of the uplands is far more 
favourable to Araucarias than alternations of temperature. As 
they will bear a great weight of snow without being broken by 
it, nature’s white blanket ought never to be disturbed by the 
gardener. 
The two principal Araucarias at Edinburgh were about twenty 
feet and twenty-five feet high, as nearly as I could estimate 
without measuring, and their diameter at the base, just above the 
roots, was about twelve inches. 
Sir Charles Monck’s stately Araucaria, at Belsay, is twenty- 
nine feet high. It was, when I saw it, quite as thick in pro- 
portion to its height as those at Edinburgh, and equally well 
clothed with branches, so that its diameter must considerably 
exceed theirs. By a communication from its much-respected 
owner, who has long been distinguished as a patron of phyto- 
logical science, and as a cultivator and collector of rare and 
interesting ligneous plants, capable of bearing the open-air in 
our climate, it will be seen that this, which must be now much 
the noblest specimen existing north of the Trent, remains unin- 
jured. Sir Charles Monck’s account of the condition of the 
Belsay collection—now that a subsequent summer has tested the 
injury done by the past winter—is of peculiar interest. I send 
it for insertion in the next number of our “ Transactions,” toge- 
ther with the record of the temperature at Belsay during the 
frost, which is one of the best and most carefully kept memorials 
of the extraordinary cold, that I have seen. 
Deodaras, too, succeed best in rather an upland climate, if 
sheltered from too much exposure to the west. It is necessary 
