A. NORDMANNIANA 87 
regard for any of those little thermometric irregulari- 
ties of the calendar, in the shape of late spring frosts 
or Etesian winds. 
Neither are they hypercritical sticklers, like so many 
of their kind, in a choice of soil or in aspect of position. 
In short they accept cheerfully, in happy-go-lucky 
frame of mind, what their tutelary gods send them, 
be it situation assigned or visitation of elements. 
They hold better timber testimonials than the 
generality of the Abies Family, and they—the Silver 
Firs—we are constrained to say, do not hold as high 
a character for popularity among timber buyers as 
many of their owners would wish. The complaints 
urged against them are that they are generally of too 
large a size to push, move, or compete with on the 
saw bench. Another drawback alleged against them 
is that their rather porous propensities make them 
adapted for indoor rather than outdoor use in their 
final careers. 
As, then, they have been acclaimed as growing 
trees (1) weatherproof, and (2) picturesque, (3) of 
accommodating disposition to soils and sites, (4) as of 
fairly useful timber properties, the wonder grows ; 
why is it that our horizons, our backgrounds, our 
middle distances, and our foregrounds are not more 
often streaked with their dark masses, looming out 
against skylines? The answer may be that about 
the times they should have been or might have been 
planted, say, in the seventies or eighties (they were 
introduced about 1850), to produce such effects, 
ornamental tree-planting was neither a favourite nor 
fashionable craze of the land-owning confraternity. 
Like Gallio, the lordly possessors of vast domains 
in that day were not caring very much just then 
about such things. 
In the forties of the last century it evidently was 
more a matter of concern with them, and in the last 
