54 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and thought out as an idea, almost unconsciously at times, but 

 the taste-faculty acts and determines nevertheless, and the after- 

 wards materialised fact constitutes the features of the landscape 

 immediately about us. It has been pointed out that man's 

 actions perpetually bring him out of concealment, and he is then 

 discovered ; so no man can plant a tree, or arrange a group, 

 taking survey of the surroundings about him, without so far 

 displaying the bent of his genius, the level of his culture, and 

 the possession of taste. 



There are few classes of plants in connection with the dis- 

 posal and arrangement of which it is so needful to exercise 

 care and judgment as the Coniferte. They are so distinctively 

 decorative, and so decoratively distinctive, that it is readily 

 possible to make a thing of beauty with slender resources, or to 

 mar a beautiful thing or a beautiful place, or both, by putting in 

 plants of the wrong kinds in the wrong way in the wrong 

 situations. 



A Cedar within a few feet of a main walk, an Araucaria in 

 the town garden where the space available was but a few yards 

 and the branches were thrown out in provoking proximity to the 

 drawing-room window, I have seen within the past few weeks, 

 in each case an evidence of misjudgment, bad taste, and a per- 

 petual eyesore to everybody. 



The decorative character of Conifers is not confined to the 

 few features which seem at first to constitute the characteristics 

 which may be taken as forming the ornamental endowment of 

 trees and plants which cannot be classed for decorative effect 

 amongst flowering plants, as, though the Conifer^e come within 

 the division Phanerogamia, their flowers are indistinct and 

 nearly valueless as ornament." If we think over what there 

 is to be found in Conifers tending to make them conspicuously 

 beautiful features, either singly or grouped, we should find how 

 rich the family is in points of grace and dignity, of colour-glory, 

 and in other features having, rightly, a claim to be classed 

 amongst the beautiful. 



Linnseus spoke of the Palm-trees as " princes of vegetable 

 nature." Whilst the Palm may claim this regal recognition in 

 the tropics, surely the Pines are princes also. I think in the 

 Gaelic tongue the Scotch Fir — so called, though really it should 

 be the Scotch Pine, as it is strictly speaking a Pine and not a 



