42 



ILEX. 



The Holly grows in almost any soil, but thrives best, 

 and attains its greatest size in a rich sandy or gravelly 

 loam ; we have also seen it very large in what may be 

 called a stiff loamy clay, not overcharged with moisture : 

 Miller says it thrives in a gravelly soil over a substratum 

 of chalk, and in Buckinghamshire, Kent, and some other 

 counties, the finest Hollies are growing in soil of this 

 description. 



Boucher remarks that it refuses not the poorest, hot, 

 sandy, gravelly, and rocky ground, nor the coldest spouty 

 clay and till. By Loudon, bogs and marshes are excepted 

 as habitats, but we have frequently met with it in what 

 may be called very spongy, if not actually boggy ground. 

 In most of our woods where the Holly is indigenous, it is 

 more frequently met with as an under-growth than as a 

 timber tree, having been overtopped and kept down by the 

 quicker and more rapid growth of its neighbours ; it is, 

 however, this quality, of bearing with comparative impu- 

 nity the drip and shade of other trees, that renders it un- 

 equalled as an underwood evergreen, and allows it to grow 

 in a situation where the box-tree and common laurel can 

 barely exist. 



The site most favourable for the full developement of 

 the Holly, is where the other trees do not grow so close 

 together as to overtop it ; such has been the case with 

 the fine specimens in Need wood, the New Forest, and 

 other natural woods ; and there can be little doubt, 

 from the experiments already made, that the Holly may 

 be reared as a tree in our plantations, provided due 

 care be taken to keep its head free and trained to a single 

 stem. 



However difficult and uncertain in Evelyn's time the 

 manner of obtaining young Holly and other trees might 



