the several senses, and with the greatest, or at least the most natural, perfection." Since his time the art of gardening has been vastly expanded, both by the greater number and higher quality of fruits and vegetables, and by the immensely increased variety and beauty of the flowers and shrubs brought in late years from many parts of the earth, and now cultivated in England. These useful and beautiful plants are a source of pleasure, not only in cultivating and watching their progress to maturity, but in the enjoyment of their usual superior quality; and thus they give to the grower satisfactions which cannot be obtained from such as are merely purchased. A well-kept lawn, too, is a most pleasurable adjunct to a home, affording, as it does, a place for exercise and the enjoyment of various games. It is always an attractive place to the many singing and other birds with which England is so richly provided. Even near a large town a garden often gives us a glimpse of wild nature; and during the past summer the writer's garden (which is but a short distance from busy streets) was visited by squirrels, hedgehogs, moles, and a sparrowhawk preying on young thrushes bred there. Bees,

which may be considered semi-domesticated, also give great interest and amusement to those who observe them closely; and a hive or two should always be kept in a garden, for, if the honey be not wanted, they do much good in fertilising the fruit blossoms, and the expense of keeping them is next to nothing.

In fact our space will not admit of mentioning all the many and varied advantages and pleasures afforded by a garden for well-nigh the whole year round; and it may safely be affirmed that nothing else will give an equal amount of interest and pleasure for the same moderate or small outlay.

But far more important than all the pleasures above mentioned is to be reckoned the great advantage of health improved by life in the country. There cannot be a question as to the immense benefit to health from continually breathing pure air, instead of air largely contaminated by smoke, noxious vapours, and dirt of many sorts. If to pure air be added country walks and drives, and space and opportunity for a variety of outdoor exercises, it is apparent that to live in the country is one of the best means of strengthening and maintaining the health of a family, especially of one including young people.

At the present time the over tendency to crowd for residence into the metropolis as a place of permanent abode, seems, for various reasons, a thing to be regretted. By means of the rapid and cheap travelling communications of to-day, great facilities are given (even to those who live in what were once remote parts of the country) to enjoy, at small expense of time and money, such townpleasures as scientific meetings, concerts, picture galleries, etc., without sacrificing the great and permanent advantages of life in the country. Continental nations, as a rule, have little taste for rural pleasures and a country life; but these have always been distinguishing characteristics of English life, and doubtless were not without their effect in the long and successful struggle at the beginning of the present century against the military despot, who at one time had almost succeeded in enslaving the greater part of Europe. The eminent position and great possessions of England in all quarters of the globe, which are a source of envy to other nations, have not been earned without the expenditure by Englishmen of severe labour, and extraordinary enterprise, vigour, energy, and tenacity of mind; and by such qualities only can they be retained by our successors. But a firm and

healthy mind usually requires for its support a healthy and robust body; and surely it cannot be expected that the high qualities above mentioned, which have descended to us from our ancestors, invigorated by country life and field sports, will be transmitted to our descendants, if, first their constitutions, and afterwards their minds and energies, should become enervated by too great fondness for town life, with its numerous and debilitating allurements.

GEO: NORTON.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FIR FOREST.

BY REV. HUGH MACMILLAN, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E.,

Author of "Holdings in High Lands," "First Forms of Vegetation,"
Mosaics," "The Riviera," etc., etc.

"Roman

THE Scotch fir has more character than any other tree. Though belonging to the most formal and symmetrical of all the orders of plant life, it refuses to conform, except in its early stages, to the straight-laced rules of construction of the order. It follows its own wayward mode of growth, and displays a most striking amount of individuality. A plantation of young Scotch firs is indeed as formal as that of any species of the pine tribe, and presents an exceedingly tame and monotonous appearance. But as the tree grows older it throws off the uninteresting swaddling bands of its youth, and develops an amount of freedom and eccentricity of shape which no one would have expected of its staid and proper infancy. Its trunk loses its smoothness and roundness, and bursts out into rugged flakes of bark like the scales on the talons of a bird of prey, or the plates of mail on an armed knight. Its boughs cease to grow in symmetrical straight and horizontal lines, but fling themselves out in all directions, gnarled and contorted as if wrestling with some inward agony or outward obstacle like a vegetable Laocoon. Its colour also changes; the trunk becomes of the rich tawny red which the level afternoon sun brings

out with glowing vividness, and the blue-green masses of irregular foliage contrast wonderfully with this rusty hue, and attest the strength and freshness of its life.

The fir is the tree par excellence of the mountains, having its root on the granite rock that is the foundation stone of the world, or among the gravel and boulders of the old glacier moraines that have been left behind by the great ice-sheets that moulded the mountains into their present shape. The very name of Pinus sylvestris which it bears is but a form of the old Celtic word for mountain, as preserved in the words Ben Lomond, Ben Nevis, Apennines. It is the companion of the storm that has twisted its boughs into such picturesque irregularities, and whose mutterings are ever heard among its sybilline leaves.

It is seen to best advantage when struggling out of the writhing mists that have entangled themselves among its branches. And no grander background for a sylvan scene, no more picturesque crown for a rocky height, no finer subject for an artist's pencil exists in nature. While the rain brings out the fragrance of the weeping birches, these "slumbering and liquid trees," as Walt Whitman calls them, that are the embodiments of the female principle of the woods, it needs the strongest and hottest sunshine to extort the pungent aromatic scents of the sturdy firs, which form the masculine element of the forest.

The fir is an old-world tree. Its sigh on the stillest summer day speaks of an immemorial antiquity. Its form is constructed on a primitive pattern. It is a relic of the far-off geological ages when pines like it formed the sole vegetation of the earth. It is the production of the world's heroic age, when Nature seemed to delight in the fantastic exercise of power, and to exhibit her strength in the growth of giants and monsters. It has