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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
SMO SUS Sw OSS 
HERE are few persons the world over who have not a tender spot in their hearts for Evergreens. Mother Nature has hardly 
, than in her gift of the trees that remain green always. n Summer 
‘ks them as they stand against the ground of deeper color or against the 
the monot- 
given us greater treasures in the whole realm of plant 
their deep color, suggesting shadowy mysteriousness 1 
In Winter they give to the landscape just the note of relief required to lift the vision above the sense of 
ony of the brown earth or the glare of the snow-clad countryside. Perhaps we unconsciously associate all Evergreens with the 
Christmas story and its gladsome festivities, or it may be thatthere runs in our blood the heritage of the Norsemen, the Teutons, 
or the Saxons, who held the Evergreen in veneration. Even the ancient Greeks told how Cybele, mother of the gods, changed a shepherd lad 
into a Pine, and Jove, sympathizing with her in the after-grief she betrayed for her act, ordained that thenceforward the leaves of the Pine should 
be evergreen. Even to this day in China, the natives consider the Pine emblematic of eternal friendship, and did not the Pilgrim Fathers take 
the old Pine Tree (the only green, growing thing they saw brightening the horizon of their landing), as the emblem of their new colony? Then 
enerable in 
there is the Larch which, when burned, was thought in times of witchery to drive away serpents and evil things, and the Juniper, v 
the traditions of antiquity. The Fir, St. Nicholas’s tree, the Spruce, chief mystic tree of the Indians of the Northwest, and the 
Hemlock (which we must not confuse with the plant the ancients meted out as death potion to the condemned), the Cedar, 
famous in the building of Solomon’s Temple, and the Cypress, from which was woyenthe crown gf Melpomeme, the tragic muse. 
azure sky. 
