PREFATORY 
Drat the trees, says I, to be sewer I haates ’em, my lass, 
For we puts the muck o’ the land, an’ they sucks the muck fro’ 
the grass, 
TENNYSON, The Village Wife. 
THERE are several inducements that have prompted 
me to put together this little summarized table of the 
chief characteristics of Conifers. In the first place I 
was instigated to do so for my own personal edi- 
fication. I found that, unless you were perpetually 
in their midst, the various differences and char- 
acteristics of trees were not quite so reproducible on 
occasions as could be wished, and that often when 
the moment came, the man, and his stores of ready 
wit, were not forthcoming. Their little idiosyn- 
crasies, sometimes even their very name, with which 
in calmer moments you were perfectly acquainted, 
had an evasive way of slipping both your mental 
and vocal efforts. Sometimes these lapses of 
memoria technica would be followed by a little door- 
step wit, or some such method of recognition, of a 
mere momentary nature, and afterwards made good 
after a consultation in an up-to-date library, populous 
with arboricultural works. 
If you are not out for effect, and effect with you 
is not a primary consideration, why not let written 
memoranda do some of the carrying trade of the 
intelligence department? You may lay yourself 
open to the challenge that your hat (or in this case 
your notebook) contains more than your head, a 
suggestion from the audience that once a young 
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