EVERGREEN" ORNAMENTAL TREES. 
473 
SECTION IY. 
REMARKS ABOUT HALF-HARDY PLANTS AND THE NEWER 
EVERGREEN ORNAMENTAL TREES AND SHRUBS, WITH THE 
METHOD OF ACCLIMATIZING AND EMPLOYING THEM. 
Perhaps in no one way has the taste for planting 
more developed itself since the first appearance of 
Mr. Downing’s book, especially during the past four 
or five years, than in the increasing predilection 
for evergreens, and prevailing desire not only to plant 
the better known and more common varieties, but also 
those of more recent introduction. 
Almost every one, even with the smallest place, now 
plants not only the Norway spruce, and the Austrian 
and Scotch pines, but is even desirous of trying his 
hand upon deodars, cryptomerias and other varieties, 
considered only as luxuries in Mr. Downing’s day. 
The cost of these plants having been reduced from 
one or two guineas apiece, to fifteen or twenty cents, 
the ease with which they may be imported, at little or 
no risk, and the facility with which they live, at least 
for one or two years, to say nothing of the fashion for 
evergreens now-a-days, are certainly very strong temp- 
tations ; but the actual beauty, great variety and 
contrast in character, habit, and color, and the entire 
hardihood of a great many new sorts, and the vast 
addition made by this class of trees to a winter’s land- 
scape, much more frequently seen now by owners of 
country places than when the first edition even of this 
work appeared, all combine to make it very desirable 
that some authentic information should be given, which 
