THE FLOWER GARDEN. 271 



many of the plants of the tropics to blend their beauty and 

 fragrance, during oui brief warm summers, with the hardier 

 beauties of our sterner climate. 



We possess a wealth of beauty in our Evergreens, and much 

 of comfort, too, for they can be so planted about the farm- 

 stead as to shelter the buildings from the keen frost-laden blasts 

 of winter, making the spot within their shielding influence 

 several degrees warmer, and a great many degrees more comfort- 

 able, than out where the wind sweeps on with unbroken power. 

 We have a goodly number of these which are native to the soil, 

 and those who wish to increase the variety may add to our own 

 White Spruce, Hemlock Spruce, Balsam Fir, White Pine, &o., 

 the Scotch and Austrian Pines, the Norway Spruce, and the 

 rarer, but equally hardy, Nordman's Fir and Eastern Spruce. 



We have deciduous trees, too, of great loveliness, and these 

 may be so interspersed with the Evergreens as to heighten each 

 the beauty of the other. A most graceful tree is oui drooping 

 Ebn, and with it, all the Maples,- — the Eed, the Sugar, and the 

 Silver Maple,— -with the Birches and the Oaks, flourish through- 

 out the Dominion. To these may be added the Mountain Ash, 

 both of Europe and America; and Maples, and Oaks, and' 

 Birches and F.lma of other climes, as may best please the taste of 

 the planter. And if he have a little knowledge of their several 

 tints of foliage, and particularly of their autumn hues, and of 

 their natural forms and habits of growth, he can so plant them 

 that through all the changing year they shall minister to the 

 homestead both grace and beauty. 



But it is hardly within the scope of this humble treatise to 

 dwell upon the subject of the planting and management of trees 

 around our dwelling-places, and the formation of lawns and 

 parks. The time, we trust, is near at hand when the desire for 

 home embeUishment in the planting of trees shall attain such a 

 position among ns, that Canadians will require and receive, from 

 abler hands, a work that shall treat specially of the planting of 

 ornamental trees, and give such hints concerning their arrange- 



