FLORA AND SYLVA. 



suckers of the Ozier on which they 

 are grafted, these have already got the 

 upper hand, and the once graceful and 

 distinct little line of gray weeping trees 

 is now the most hideous funeral pro- 

 cession one could see. At the bottom 

 a thick cloud of half-decayed wood and 

 above the common Ozier, not half as 

 pretty as it is in its natural growth. If 

 our planting were confined to garden 

 planting it might then be possible to 

 control this, but the moment we begin 



to plant in any right and bold way we 

 must get out of the garden, and watch- 

 ing every tree for suckers is hopeless. 

 A very little trouble would have sufficed 

 to put this graceful Weeping Willow 

 on its natural roots, which would have 

 been a good state for its natural life ; 

 but now I not only lose my trees, but 

 I have to disestablish many Oziers out 

 of place, which is not by any means an 

 easy task. 



In the Jura Forest. — Among the hours 

 of his life to which the writer looks back with 

 peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by 

 more than ordinary fulness of joy or clearness 

 of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, 

 near time of sunset, among the broken masses 

 of Pine forest which skirt the course of the 

 Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the 

 Jura. It is a spot which has all the solemnity, 

 with none of the savageness, of the Alps : 

 where there is a sense of great power begin- 

 ning to be manifested in the earth, and of a 

 deep and majestic concord in the rise of the 

 long low lines of piny hills ; the first utterance 

 of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon 

 to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken 

 along the battlements of the Alps. But their 

 strength is as yet restrained ; and the far- 

 reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed 

 each other, like the long and sighing swell 

 which moves over quiet waters from some far- 

 off stormy sea. And there is a deep tendency 

 pervading that vast monotony. The destruc- 

 tive forces and the stern expression of the 

 central ranges are alike withdrawn. No frost- 

 ploughed, dust-encumbered, paths of ancient 

 glacier fret the soft Jura pastures ; no splint- 

 ered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her 

 forests ; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers wend 

 their rude and changeful ways among her 

 rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green 

 streams wind along their well-known beds ; 

 and under the dark quietness of the undis- 

 turbed Pines, there spring up, year by year, 

 such company of joyful flowers as I know not 



the like of among all the blessings of the earth. 

 It was spring time, too : and all were coming 

 forth in clusters crowded for very love ; there 

 was room enough for all, but they crushed 

 their leaves into all manner of strange shapes 

 only to be nearer each other. There was the 

 Wood Anemone, star after star, closing every 

 now and then into nebula? ; and there was the 

 Oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal proces- 

 sions of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical 

 clefts in the limestone choked up with them 

 as with heavy snow, and touched with Ivy on 

 the edges — Ivy as light and lovely as the vine ; 



j and, ever and anon, a blue gush of Violets, and 

 Cowslip bells in sunny places; and in the more 

 open ground, the Vetch, and Comfrey, and 

 Mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the 

 Polygala a/pi>m, and the Wild Strawberry, just 

 a blossom or two, all showered amidst the gol- 



! den softness of deep, warm, amber-coloured 

 moss. — J. Ruskin. 



OSTEOMELES ANTH YLLIDIFOLIA, that pretty 



little evergreen, is now (July 4) going out of 

 flower, hastened by recent hot days, during 



j which its place on the wall at Kew must have 

 been a very warm one. It is a pity that this 



1 will not stand in the open, for it is not well 

 adapted to a wall, and nothing could be better 

 in form or effect as a bush, it being a neat, com- 

 pact grower, fine in leaf, and bearing in June 

 many sweet hawthorn-like flowers, succeeded 

 by reddish fruits. In the south-west it would 

 probably succeed thus, for the few specimens 

 to be met with in the south of France are quite 

 uninjured by sharp touches of frost. 



