30 HOME AND GARDEN 



leaf-point. It is a plant that for leaf effect in the 

 early year should be in every garden ; it would hold 

 its place as worthily as Veratrum or Artichoke. Later 

 in the year there are other plants of bold leaf-beauty, 

 but in April and May they are so few that none should 

 be overlooked. 



In several woods in my neighbourhood there are 

 old groups of common Laurel that have never been 

 cut or pruned. They all look to be about the same 

 age, and must have been planted early in the century, 

 for they were already old trees when I was a child. 

 There are large groups of them on four adjoining 

 properties, in one wood or coppice of each. It looks 

 as if four neighbouring squires had agreed to try a 

 good patch of them as experimental undergrowth. I 

 have a rather strong dislike to the clipped Laurel of 

 the ordinary shrubbery, but grooving at will in the 

 woods they are handsome small trees with a good deal 

 of pictorial value. Their smooth grey stems are some- 

 thing like elephants' trunks or some kind of grey ser- 

 pent, the more so that they curl about and seem almost 

 to writhe, often turning downward and lying along the 

 ground, and then rising and twisting again. A shrub 

 showing such a habit of growth sends one's mind 

 wandering away to some of the old Greek myths that 

 dealt with the transformation of man or beast into 

 some form of plant or tree life ; and though the shrub 

 of this family we know best is a native of the 



