HOME WOODS, 



37 



slip, Wood Hyacinth, Primrose (on northern slopes), Marsh Marigold (in wet 

 copses), and Sloe. But this great beauty often has to be looked for through 

 briary paths and dense underwood, and the best of it is not brought into easy 

 connection with the home grounds. In many country places, where people 

 labour for years with a wretched stereotyped kind of garden, they take no 

 trouble to see the beauty of the wild bushes and plants that grow naturally near 

 them, without cost or care. Even the supreme beauty of our native trees is 

 often a sealed book to them, while they perhaps spend time and money on 

 tender trees, useless and ugly in our land either for wood or garden. 



The wood is a mighty worker for man, a precious gift of beauty as well as 

 profit. For the wood, unlike the farm, wants few costly labourers, no weeding 

 or ploughing, finds its own manure, does its own watering, finds its own shade 

 and shelter, and does all this and much more work, and without the aid of 

 the colleges now thought necessary to make the good gardener or farmer. 

 Moreover, if all the wit of man, backed by all the learning of the colleges, 

 were on one side and a wood of our best native trees on the other, the wood 

 would certainly give a better return than could be got from any labour or 

 capital applied to the same class of land in other ways. 



EVERGREEN WOODS FOR BEAUTY AND PROFIT. 



Even in the most frequented lines of country we are often dismayed by the 

 ugliness resulting from the neglect of planting the most precious gifts of the 

 hills — the Mountain Pines. With few exceptions the best of these are the trees 

 of northern Europe and America, massed in serried armies on the mountains, 

 and grown on the hilly ground to a vast extent in central Europe. There are 

 good reasons for planting evergreen woods, and the first is beauty. This we 

 do not get in the kind of pleasure-ground planting in which the object is 

 to grow each tree as a specimen dressed down to the ground as in a green 

 "crinoline." It is only by grouping and massing hardy evergreen trees that we 

 can see their highest beauty, which, in most kinds, lies in the mast-like stem. 

 Nothing in the form of trees may so much influence the look of the country as 

 these evergreen trees. But a few other reasons for their planting are here given. 



In open continental countries, where the winds are powerful enough to 

 destroy the crops, shelter-belts of evergreen trees are a great defence. Much 

 sh it more so in our wind-shorn coast land we have reason to seek 

 shelter ; no country is more in want of it. If we neglect, owing 

 to the vast length of exposed coast, to give shelter, the trees and shrubs are 

 cut ofT as by giant shears above the walls. But where we have the evergreen 

 wood (beginning with wind-resisting shrubs working up to the higher trees) 

 we have perfect shelter, as at Bodorgan in Anglesey, on one of the most wind- 

 shorn coasts. 



