April 8. 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



161 



hours. After they were all planted, with great labor and 

 trouble, we gave our nursery a thorough watering, and then, 

 except on two or three subsequent occasions, when things 

 looked really desperate from drought, they were left to take 

 their chance. Luckily that year the rains began to fall soon 

 after they were set, and the autumn was a very wet one, so 

 that a good many of the little trees were living in the spring ; 



greater part are flourishing bravely, making a fine show in 

 winter against the snow. In summer they shade so com- 

 pletely into the unkempt green background of the hill that, un- 

 less seen in profile, they are barely visible, even when five feet 

 high, and very bushy. Still farther back we have tried setting 

 out very small Pines, and have sown the ground in autumn 

 with countless Pine-seeds, and nuts of all sorts, which come up 



Fig. 29. — Phyllanthus pallidifolius. — See page 162. 



but another batch, set in the latter part of May the following 

 year, owing possibly to the very heavy rains of 1888 and 1889, 

 did so much better, that we shall always be disposed to give 

 the preference to spring planting in the future. 



Of some 150 Pines set out upon this barren northerly hill- 

 side, under these cruel conditions, about eighty survive, a few 

 of which are still leading a precarious existence, while the 



satisfactorily enough, and do bravely for a month or two, but 

 suffer dreadfully in July and August. They are a fruitful 

 source of anxiety and disappointment, because they cannot 

 make up their minds whether to live or die. The young Oaks 

 are especially trying in this respect, for when we have fairly 

 given them up for lost, they thrust out a feeble little leaf and 

 make a fresh effort at existence, but at this rate a millennium 



