ii9 



It is common, however, being naturally sown 

 in some districts and cannot be excluded from 

 our plantings, and the safest way with it, per- 

 haps, is to put it in a dense group towards the 

 centre of a wood, where its shelter will be very 

 welcome to birds in winter. 



The Palmate Bamboo {Bambusa pal- 

 matd). — There is often good natural covert by 

 the side of water, natural covert being often 

 the best and least troublesome to establish; but 

 in the many places where water comes near, 

 some may desire a more varied and evergreen 

 covert, and for this end I never had such suc- 

 cess with any plant as the above-named grace- 

 ful, vigorous, and truly evergreen Bamboo. 



I first had it in a moist wood in rather 

 black soil, and then took a fancy to moving 

 it to the waterside in ordinary heavy and cool 

 soil. It did well in it; but, although we took 

 the plant out carefully from the wood, a num- 

 ber of roots remained, and from these arose 

 the most graceful colony of plants I ever saw, 

 so fresh and fine a green in the middle of win- 

 ter as almost to make one forget the season; 

 the shoots are handsome enough to cut for 



the house in winter, the growth close, and the 

 form beautiful. It was quite free by the water- 

 side, where its fine reed-like habit is the very 

 thing we want to go with Reeds and Willows. 

 This plant is, perhaps, not yet easy to secure in 

 the quantity likely to be wanted as covert, but 

 it is so vigorous a grower and free at the root 

 that there cannot be much difficulty in getting 

 a stock. My plants are 6 to 8 feet high ; with 

 Lord Redesdale it grows higher. For covert 

 it must usually be in the natural soil of a place, 

 and the normal growth is best. 



The Japanese Bamboo {B. Metake). — 

 This is an older and better known plant than 

 B. pa/mata, and very free and hardy in varied 

 conditions. It grows somewhat taller, but is a 

 fine covert plant where a growth of a larger 

 sort is desired. It has long been cultivated in 

 Surrey nurseries and is easy to secure ; it in- 

 creases quite freely either in woodland or near 

 water. Some of the older Bamboos, such as 

 used to be grown first of all as B.falcata so 

 well in the south of Ireland, at Fota, give tall 

 covert of a graceful sort, but not so good as 

 these. 



* 



DAVID CANNON ON INTRODUCED FOREST TREES. 



Mr. David Cannon is an Englishman who has made 

 his home in the Sologne, which is a cold part of 

 France, where he has made some instructive and im- 

 portant experiments in planting, the results of which 

 he related in a paper that was read before the Society 

 of Agriculture of France in 1900, and has been kindly 

 revised by the author for Flora and Sylva : — 



" My soil is naturally very poor, and the climate 

 of Sologne is much given to extremes of heat in sum- 

 mer and cold in winter, with frosts more or less 

 severe from September to May : my experiments 

 are consequently confined to the most hardy kinds. 

 The man who can succeed at Vaux will be successful 

 in any silicious,* even poor, soil, provided it has a 

 little moisture. Sandy soils, when not too much 

 parched by the heat, are favourable to the growth of 

 conifers. The height measurements were taken with 

 a Goullier clisimeter, and the girths were measured 

 about 4 feet from the ground. Those measurements 

 were taken last March, and for this year's (1900) 

 growth should be added another i-jL to 3 feet to the 

 height, and to the measurements round the stem a 

 little less or a little more than an inch, according to 

 the vigour of the species. 



" The Colorado Silver Fir {Abies concolor, var. 

 lasiocarpa). — Its area extends over the Rocky Moun- 



tains from Colorado to North California. It is a 

 robust and remarkably handsome tree, with the large 

 leaves silvery on both sides. Its growth continues 

 late in the season, and it seldom suffers from spring 

 frosts. In America its height is colossal, and in some 

 favourable soils reaches to about 250 feet. Most of 

 those of my own planting I have found slow growers. 

 One isolated tree, planted in 1889 in poor dry soil, 

 is still little more than 14 feet high, and less than 

 a foot in circumference. The best specimens in a 

 younger clump are not above 6 feet 6 inches ; now, 

 however, they are more at home, and they promise 

 to shoot up. 



"The 'Pugit Sound ' Fir {Abies grandis). — A 

 gigantic Fir of North-Western America, producing 

 an immense amount of excellent wood. It should, 

 therefore, be a very important gain could we succeed 

 in acclimatising it as a forest tree. It much resem- 

 bles our Silver Fir but for its larger foliage, and of 

 all the species of the family it appears to be the 

 slowest at starting. It is of quite recent cultivation 

 at Vaux ; the plants are easily grown in the nursery ; 

 one specimen amongst others has shoots over 2 feet 

 already. It appears to suffer from the heat of the 

 sun, and perhaps in the south it would require pro- 

 tection. 



* I understand "silicious" to comprise sandy, sand-stone or granite soils; in fact, all that are not clay or limestone. 



K 



