l6o JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



annual ability to do something to improve our three great National 

 Botanic Gardens. I do not wish to suggest that I am in a position 

 to treat, as the Spaniards say, de poder a poder, but at least my 

 relations with them are no longer " all take and no give." 



To return to Q. agrifolia. This when fully developed in its native 

 land is a ponderous tree, and commonly so low that the spread of 

 its branches exceeds its height. The bark is dark, and except in 

 old trees smooth ; the oval or oblong leaves are not so leathery as 

 those of Q. Wislizenii ; the long, narrow, pointed, tapering acorns, 

 which are marked with conspicuous lines, are sessile, and develop in 

 one season. A clear and faithful drawing of a flowering branch is 

 reproduced on Plate V. in " West American Oaks " by Professor E. L. 

 Greene (1889). I hardly see that it has any special merits which 

 make it greatly worth cultivating by anyone who grows plants merely 

 for ornament and is not a collector of different species as such. The 

 Kew specimen is about 35 ft. high, and I presume about twice that 

 number of years old, and it will be no great hardship for most people 

 to have to content themselves with looking at it there without 

 attempting to grow it in their own gardens. 



I had written the preceding sentence without recalling a tree 

 and not a shrub of this species which is growing in the grounds of 

 my friend, Major Gilbert Legh, at the Drove House, Thornham, 

 Norfolk. The leaves of the Thornham specimen are nearly half as 

 big again as those of the Kew one, and are distinctly handsomer. 

 The tree, which must have been one of the first introduced into England, 

 is ill-grown, being dominated by pines and other trees which over- 

 shadow it, and the stem has a curious corrugated appearance, the 

 bark having formed a succession of shell-like rings, which feature is, 

 I am told, typical of this species in age. I leave unmodified what 

 I had written when overlooking this finer form, for it may serve as 

 an illustration of the error to which we are all too prone — I mean, 

 of basing a confident estimate of the appearance, vigour, and other 

 characteristics of a species on insufficient data, namely, the behaviour 

 of one or two plants which happen to be intimately known to us 

 but which may not be truly typical. 



Q. alba (Linnaeus).— For some unknown reason this fine timber 

 tree, like so many others whose chief habitat is the eastern side of 

 North America, has hitherto never thriven in the British Isles. Mr. 

 Bean, in his deservedly popular "Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the 

 British Isles," expresses an opinion that there is not one existent over 

 25 ft. high, and so far as Aldenham is concerned I can bear out his 

 statement, for my two tallest plants are respectively 18 and 14 ft. in 

 height. Messrs. Elwes and Henry, also, in their monumental work, 

 " The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland," having visited me while 

 it was in course of production, write in 1910, on p. 1303, of " some 

 plants at Aldenham, with sickly yellow foliage, planted eight years 

 ago." Though at the time they fully deserved this depreciatory 

 comment, it is very remarkable, having regard to the bad European 



