CONIFERS AND TAXADS. 
259 
is the drooping of the—in some cases already pendent — branches. This drooping 
disposition should be amply provided for by planting sufficiently high, and the 
specimens as much isolated as circumstances will allow ; for it is indeed an exqui- 
sitely charming feature, all the more lovely in the character of a Conifer, because 
existing in perpetual freshness. But it especially needs setting off to advantage, so 
much so, that if it is not, a painful rather than any other effect is created, as is 
shewn by things naturally inclined to droop when they happen to be growing in low 
situations, or are so placed that they seem beneath the eye, and therefore lost, what- 
ever may be their capabilities of creating effect. 
We must not fail to observe, before concluding remarks that relate, if not 
directly, indirectly to planting, that a specimen which may have been many years 
growing in an important position, and happens to have experienced ill usage before 
being planted there, and is stunted, making little progress, may have its roots set at 
liberty, or be raised properly into view, without any fear of harm accruing from the 
performance of the operation, the necessary care being taken in its accomplishment. 
On the liability of Coniferous plants to injury from severe weather, not from 
extreme cold and frost owing to its intenseness, but from its occurrence at periods 
when vegetation generally is most open to injury from it, as late in winter and early 
in spring, it will suffice to observe, this kind of severe weather, it is too well known, 
often produces very disastrous results in the vegetable kingdom, but in no portion of 
it more lamentable ones than it does among Conifers. They, after their bursting 
buds are destroyed by frost, may be regarded as ruined, owing to their not being 
provided like other plants with latent buds. We have known strong trees of the 
commonest species rendered a complete wreck, with every bud destroyed, by the 
occurrence of such weather as that alluded to, when the newly forming shoots and 
leaves were beginning to appear. The aptitude of Conifers, &c. to suffer so exten- 
sively from a visitation of the kind described, is all the more lamentable because 
there does not exist a possibility of sheltering them to any extent, and on a large 
scale, even if there were always an indication of the approach of that which it is 
necessary to shelter them from, which there by no means is ; and all that can be 
done in the way of preventing the mischief is to protect the main or leading shoot by 
surrounding it with some suitable material. It only requires guarding from frost at 
the time it is about commencing to grow, and therefore the protection need not be of 
a formidable character, nor long employed. The watchful guarding from any kind 
of injury of the leaders of numerous Conifers until the tree is established and strong 
beyond the fear of harm, is an almost necessary care, in consequence of the value of 
that shoot in an ornamental light ; and the difficulty, — indeed, in nine cases out of 
ten, impossibility, of training another to adequately fill its place. Nature sometimes 
does, under such circumstances, what art cannot, by producing a shoot that imme- 
diately becomes an acceptable leader, and eventually a very passable one. Without 
a good erect-growing leading shoot, one far ascending above the other branches, the 
great beauty of such magnificent things as Douglas's Spruce {Abies Douglasii), and 
