122 HOW TO PLAN THE HOME GROUNDS 



beautiful, which may be all well enough if he does it 

 with his eyes open ; and, therefore, the author takes up 

 the question of planting evergreens and comparing their 

 excellence, to the end that experiments of the reader in 

 this direction may be fraught with as little loss as pos- 

 sible. 



It may be said of pines that many of them have both 

 beauty and picturesqueness of trunk and foliage, even 

 when exhibiting the last stages of . decay, and their 

 young, fresh growth can always be depended upon to be 

 charming. When we speak of pines in America we are 

 apt to refer to white pines, which, in our minds, repre- 

 sent the somewhat typical and, without doubt, the best 

 conception of the general character of the family. It 

 has been frequently said that the white pine, in Amer- 

 ica, performs relatively as important a part in the land- 

 scape as the palm in Central and Southern America, 

 and above the value of mere visual beauty comes the 

 delightful sound of the wind in the white pine, and the 

 fresh smell and elastic touch underfoot of its needles. 



In addition to the white pine, there are the Swiss stone 

 pine (P. cembra), and the dwarf mugho pine, which 

 possess dark beauty and healthy, long-life vigor. It 

 would be not unfair to bunch together firs, spruces, 

 retinosporas, American and Chinese arbor-vitffis, cryp- 

 tomerias, Lawson's cypresses, sequoias, and junipers, as 

 comparatively more or less unsatisfactory after they 

 have obtained maturity. 



Like all general statements, there are marked excep- 

 tions to be considered, and notably among these are the 

 red cedar (juniperus virginiana) and the Oriental spruce, 

 which are most picturesque, and fine at any age, although 

 they are hard to transplant, unless set out when young. 



