380 THE COMMON LAUREL. 
form an underwood, and yield a good shelter for game; they 
thrive best on dry ground. The wood of all these kinds 
possesses a richness of colour and veining that recommends it 
for the purposes of the cabinet-maker and turner. 
As plants, they are all very ornamental in the season both 
of their flower and fruit ; and no tribe of plants yields a more 
abundant supply of food for singing birds, particularly for the 
blackbird and thrush. The plants grow freely either from 
seed or layers. The seeds should he sown, when thoroughly 
Tipe, a few inches apart; they all spring the first season, and 
should be placed in nursery rows when one year old. 
The Laurel Cherry—Cerasus Lawrocerasus (Lois),—or Com- 
mon Laurel, is a native of the west of Asia, and grows wild in 
woody and sub-Alpine regions in Caucasus and in the moun- 
tains of Persia. It was introduced into Britain in the begin- 
ning of the seventeenth century. Parkinson in his Para- 
disus, published in 1629, is the first who records it, under the 
name of the Bay Cherry, growing at Highgate, at the country 
house of Mr. Cole, a merchant of London, where it had 
“flowered divers times, and yielded ripe fruit also.” The 
plant, in a healthy state, is one of our finest evergreens ; its 
leaves are large and massive, with a shining polish. It not 
unfrequently produces shoots from two to three feet in length 
yearly, and when young is of far more rapid growth than 
most evergreens in the climate of Britain ; but as the plant 
fails to yield a thickness proportional with its length of 
growth, it spreads out to a large bush, and assumes the 
character of a shrub rather than that of a timber tree. The 
chief use of the plant is embellishment, but it is only in a 
soil thoroughly suitable that it is adapted for that purpose ; 
in a wet, hard, or retentive soil it is affected by frost, when it 
becomes unsightly, yielding only a scanty foliage of a yellowish 
green, and a number of dead twigs. It should therefore be 
planted in a rich, deep, free soil, and in a sheltered situation. 
It affects the shade, and forms a highly ornamental under- 
wood. It is propagated by seed, by cuttings, and by layers. 
The berries become ripe in autumn, when they should be 
