EFFECTS OF CLIMATE. 



275 



tricts. The principal reasons of tlieir failure ui the 

 warmer localities are, that the season of growth being 

 unduly protracted, 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 transition from winter 

 to summer is generally rapid, and so the plants escape 

 with little injury. If there is a constitutional tendency 

 in any plants to a protracted growth, there is little pro- 

 bability of their ever proving hardy : still this tendency 

 is always found to be greatest when the plants are young, 

 and therefore no one should be discouraged even by re- 

 peated failures in such cases. H. Graham, Esq., of 

 Belstane, whose judicious and persevering efforts in ac- 

 climatizing plants have met with deserved success, when 

 furnishing his pinetum, at his residence about twelve 

 miles from Edinburgh and more than 700 feet above 

 the level of the sea, found that plants procured from 

 the nurseries of Paris, London, and Edinburgh, con- 

 tinued tender for the first two or three years, till their 

 constitution had become attempered to the place, and 

 they had outlived the period of irregular growth. To 

 Mr. Graham we are indebted for some of the indica- 

 tions of hardiness given in the foregoing enumeration of 

 species. We have also been favoured with similar in- 



