EFFECTS OF CLIMATE. 



851 



congenial in our hill climates. 'We doubt not that cer- 

 tain species, which do not succeed in the low grounds, 

 will be found to do better in the higher districts. The 

 principal reasons of their failure in the warmer locali- 

 ties are, that the season of growth being unduly pro- 

 tracted, they do not sufficiently ripen their annual 

 shoots before the arrival of the autumnal frosts ; and 

 further, even where the wood has been well ripened, 

 there are not unfrequently, in these localities, long 

 periods of mild growing weather, in winter and early 

 spring, which excite vegetation long before the vernal 

 frosts have passed away; in either case, the young 

 wood is more or less destroyed. In hill climates, again, 

 there is no time for a second or protracted growth in 

 the end of summer, and the young shoots, though 

 shorter, are better ripened than in the low country ; 

 besides, the spring is comparatively short ; the transi- 

 tion from winter to summer is generally rapid, and so 

 the plants escape with little injury. If there is a con- 

 stitutional tendency in any plants to a protracted 

 growth, there is little probability of their ever prov- 

 ing hardy ; still, this tendency is always found to be 

 greatest when the plants are young, and therefore no 

 one should be discouraged even by repeated failures 

 in such cases. H. Graham, Esq., of Belstane, whose 

 judicious and persevering efforts in acclimatizing 

 plants have met with deserved success, when furnish- 

 ing his pinetum, at his residence about twelve miles 

 from Edinburgh and more than seven hundred feet 

 above the level of the sea, found that plants procured 

 from the nurseries of Paris, London, and Edinburgh, 

 continued tender for the first two or three years, till 

 their constitution had become attempered to the place 



