8 



OF SHRUBS, MOSTLY EVERGREEN 45 



it. While rare varietal forms like Comte de Dyon or 

 Pinus sylvestris beuvronensis must have the choicest fore- 

 most places on the rocks — not that they are difficult, but 

 because they are rare (all these conifers are easy, thrifty 

 doers anywhere) — there are some true species which are 

 useful higher up. Pinus Cembra, stocky and so slow- 

 growing as to count as a dwarf, may be employed as a 

 wind-break. Pinus montana is a quite invaluable low- 

 growing, straggling, vigorous little tree, the mountain- 

 pine of the highest Alpine slopes, in whose bosky twilight 

 lurk Lilium martagon and Aquilegia alpina. Learning 

 a lesson from this, I have planted mine up with Tulipa 

 gesneriana, and when their green dusk is starred with the 

 flames of the tulip the eifect is of a rare beauty. Pinus 

 koraiensis is too uncommon as yet, and too little tried, to 

 be spoken of; people who try Cryptomeria japonica are 

 almost as unwise as they who once revelled in Welling- 

 tonia ; and I have never succeeded in getting any live- 

 importations of the splendid tortured dwarf varieties that 

 spring in Japan from that most magnificent of magnified, 

 glorified Scotch Firs, Pinus massoniana. I tried to 

 import the umbrella-headed abortion, Tanyosho, only last 

 year, but my failure was so complete that I shall not 

 repeat the experiment. Finally, if any one wants a big 

 column of green darkness for a high point of some large 

 rock-work, and dares not try the Funeral Cypress, let him 

 remember, in the first place, that exquisite, lace-like 

 Cupressus torulosa is absolutely safe and hardy ; and, in 

 the second, if he wants a heavier, darker mass, that 

 Juniperus virginiana Schotti is absolutely and at all 

 points the living double of the great Funeral Cypress, 

 possessing for itself the advantage of being as hardy as a 

 Sycamore and as easy as a Privet. 



As for the Bamboos, I have a lurking feeling that it 

 is unfitting to talk of these giant grasses as either ever- 



