HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF LONDON'. 



65 



importance to procure supplies of seeds of tliis plant from Val- 

 paraiso ; for to introduce in abundance so remarkable a vege- 

 table production as this when old, with columnar trunks often 

 100 feet high, surmounted by a pyramid of its grotesque 

 branches, would be an object scarcely less than national, even if 

 the plant did not furnish excellent timber, and an abundance of 

 valuable resin. It also appears that Aristotelia Macqui, and the 

 Escallonias, rubra and glandulosa, all beautiful evergreens, are 

 about as hardy as a Laiirustinus, that the graceful little Herberis 

 empetrifolia is regardless of cold, and that Colletia horrida, 

 Duvaua ovata, and Ileimia, salicifolia, also seem likely to bear 

 this climate. 



" Of Caiifornian and Mexican plants, the former prove more 

 tender than those from Mexico : a circumstance doubtless to be 

 explained by the Caiifornian species having been taken indis- 

 criminately from warm vallies and mountain sides, while no one 

 has thought of naturalizing any Mexican species except from the 

 cold mountain ridges. All the beautiful pines and firs from 

 these regions, of whose habits so little was previously known, 

 prove to be hardy wherever they have been tried, with the ex- 

 ception of Pinus insignis and P. leiophylla. 



" The winters of North America are usually so rigorous north of 

 the districts warmed by the Gulf of Mexico, that to state that a 

 plant is from the United States, is usually equivalent to saying it 

 is hardy. There are, however, some exceptions to that rule, and 

 it was requisite to possess the experience of such a winter as 

 this, in order to judge whether the plants from the British pos- 

 sessions on the Pacific would be as hardy as those from the 

 Atlantic side of the Rocky mountains. The latter seems now to 

 be well established, for of all the numerous valuable plants intro- 

 duced by the Society from North West America, not one of any 

 importance, with the exception perhaps of Arbutus procera, 

 proved tender ; and what is of the utmost practical importance, 

 it is now clear that Abies Douglasii, a species which grows as fast 

 as the larch, has much better timber, is evergreen, and reaches 

 an enormous size, is perfectly suited to the climate of Great 

 Britain. Yuccas also resisted the frost so very generally, that 

 they may be safely introduced into gardens as hardy endogenous 

 shrubs ; and the same observation applies to V^accinium ovatum, 

 one of the handsomest of evergreens." 



The author next proceeded to advert to the singular fact, tha* 

 in those places where the cold was venj severe the more plants 

 were exposed the less they suffered, and vice versa. This he 

 explained upon the supposition, that in warm places vegetation 

 had already made some progress, and plants were stimulated, 

 prematurely into growth, their stems were filled with fiuid, an(f 

 they were, in consequence, aflected by frost in a much greater 



