62 PINES 
P. Laricio var. Austriaca or NicRICANS.—For 
the Austrian Pine I hold no brief as a planter in the 
Midlands. It may have its uses and serve purposes 
in barren places, on sandy shores, where winds unkind 
blow hard and cruel, and other inhospitable elsewheres 
of a like nature, for all I know to the contrary. The 
fact remains that it is neither so prepossessing in 
appearance nor sought after so much for sawbench 
requirements as its congeners the Scots and Corsican 
Pines. If there is any truth in this summing up of 
its qualities, it can only be remarked that it ought to 
be, in most places, discarded in favour of its affinities. 
P. LEucopERMIS has been generally looked upon 
as the Alpine form of the P. Laricio. It hails from 
Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Montenegro. It was only 
introduced to Kew in 1894. Experimentalists are 
trying them here, and they seem very promising. 
In the heights of their own country they appear 
equally to scorn the summer sun and winter snow. 
If our English hospitality may not be able to con- 
scientiously guarantee the former and more attractive 
side of the picture, it can fearlessly vouch for the 
counter-attractive. It can offer in profusion—given 
time—hard winters, late frosts, snowstorms, and 
cold winds. It has bleak pastures in plenty, on high 
lands and waste places in lofty situations, all adapted 
eminently to the more abundant presence of tree-life. 
If this is not so, a false doctrine has been dinned in 
our ears, cast in our teeth, and thrust down our 
throats, over and over again, from the day when 
Evelyn, in 1662, wrote his Sylva, to the present time, 
when the latest contribution on the subject was 
penned and produced by Professor Stebbing. 
From the tree’s historical antecedents, or anything 
that we can learn of it, what Pine, or other Conifer, 
we ask, is there better constituted to make experiment 
