How book notions change when one sees the real things! I was brought up to believe that England has the best climate in the world for evergreens, and consequently it is folly to try to rival her. The first part may be true, but the second is not. We can probably never attain more than 90 per cent, of English luxuriance, but we have a greater variety of native species. For example, we can never expect to speak of rhododendrons in our woods as " weeds," or game coverts of English laurel as "evergreen rubbish," as William Robinson justly does in criticizing certain English excesses. On the other hand, do you know what the English call broad-leaved evergreens? They often call the peat-loving members of the group " American plants," for they have in mind chiefly mountain laurel and the two rhododendrons which grow wild in our Northern States.

Of the forty-nine kinds we can grow in the North, twenty-two grow wild in this very region, and ten more are native to an allied climate (that of Japan), while only eight are native to Europe.