ously and thrive best on a rich and heavy soil, and in situations rather shaded than exposed to a burning sun.

There are several beautiful varieties of the Yew, (Taxus baccata,) cultivated in the nurseries; the Irish Yew, (T. b. fastigiata,) remarkable for its dark green foliage, and very handsome, upright growth, and the Yellow berried Yew, (T. b. fructo-flava,) are the most ornamental.

The North American Yew, (T. canadensis,) is a low trailing shrub, scarcely rising above the height of four or six feet, though the branches extend to a considerable distance. In foliage, berries, etc., it so strongly resembles the European plant, that many botanists consider it only a dwarf variety. The leaves are nevertheless shorter and narrower, and the male flowers always solitary. It is found in shady, rocky places, in the Highlands, and various other localities from Canada to Virginia.

SECTION VI.

VINES AND CLIMBING PLANTS.

The Jas

Value of this kind of Vegetation. Fine natural effects. The European Ivy. The Virginia Creeper. The Wild Grape Vine. The Bittersweet. The Trumpet Creeper. The Pipe Vine, and the Clematis. The Wistarias. The Honeysuckles and Woodbines. mine and the Periploca. Remarks on the proper mode of introducing vines. effects of climbing plants in connection with buildings.

Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk roses, and with eglantine.

Beautiful

SHAKSPEARE.

INES and climbing plants are objects full of interest for the Landscape Gardener, for they seem endowed with the characteristics of the graceful, the beautiful, and the picturesque in their luxuriant and ever-varying forms.

When judiciously introduced, therefore, nothing can so easily give a spirited or graceful air to a fine or even an ordinary scene, as the various plants which compose this group of the vegetable kingdom. We refer particularly now to those which have woody and perennial stems, as all annual or herbaceous stemmed plants are too short-lived to afford any lasting or permanent addition to the beauty of the lawn or pleasure-ground.

Climbing plants may be classed among the adventitious beauties of trees. Who has not often witnessed with delight in our native forests, the striking beauty of a noble tree, the

old trunk and fantastic branches of which were enwreathed with the luxuriant and pliant shoots, and rich foliage, of some beautiful vine, clothing even its decayed limbs with verdure; and hanging down in gay festoons, or loose negligent masses, waving to and fro in the air. The European Ivy, (Hedera Helix,) is certainly one of the finest, if not the very finest climbing plant, (or, more properly, creeping vine, for by means of its little fibres or rootlets on the stems, it will attach itself to trees, walks, or any other substance,) with which we are acquainted. It possesses not only very fine dark green palmated foliage, in great abundance; but the foliage has that agreeable property of being evergreen,which, while it enhances its value tenfold, is at the same time so rare among vines. The yellow flowers of the Ivy are great favourites with bees, from their honied sweetness; they open in autumn, and the berries ripen in the spring. When planted at the root of a tree, it will often, if the head is not too thickly clad with branches, ascend to the very topmost limbs; and its dark green foliage, wreathing itself about the old and furrowed trunk, and hanging in careless drapery from the lower branches, adds greatly to the elegance of even the most admirable tree. Spenser describes the appearance of the Ivy growing to the tops of the trees,

The fine contrasts between the dark colouring of the leaves of the Ivy, and the vernal and autumnal tints of the foliage of deciduous trees, are also highly pleasing. Indeed

this fine climbing plant may be turned to advantage in another way; in reclothing dead trees with verdure. Sir T. D. Lauder says, that "trees often die from causes which we cannot divine, and there is no one who is master of extensive woods, who does not meet with many such instances of unexpected and unaccountable mortality. Of such dead individuals we have often availed ourselves, and by planting Ivy at their roots, we have converted them into more beautiful objects than they were when arrayed in their own natural foliage."

The Ivy is not only beautiful upon trees, but it is also remarkably well adapted to ornament cottages, and even large mansions, when allowed to grow upon the walls, to which it will attach itself so firmly by the little rootlets sent out from the branches, that it is almost impossible to tear it off. On wooden buildings, it may perhaps be injurious, by causing them to decay; but on stone buildings, it fastens itself firmly, and holds both stone and mortar together like a coat of cement. The thick garniture of foliage with which it covers the surface, excludes stormy weather, and has therefore a tendency to preserve the walls, rather than accelerate their decay. This vine is the inseparable accompaniment of the old feudal castles, and crumbling towers of Europe, and borrows a great additional interest from the romance and historical recollections connected with such spots. Indeed half the beauty, picturesque, as well as poetical, of those time-worn buildings, is conferred by this plant, which seeks to bind together and adorn with something of their former richness, the crumbling fragments that are fast tottering to decay:

"The Ivy, that staunchest and firmest friend,

That hastens its succouring arm to lend

To the ruined fane where in youth it sprung,

And its pliant tendrils in sport were flung.
When the sinking buttress, and mouldering tower
Seem only the spectres of former power

Then the Ivy clusters round the wall,

And for tapestry hangs in the moss-grown hall,
Striving in beauty and youth to dress

The desolate place in its loneliness."

ROMANCE OF Nature.

The Ivy lives to a great age, if we may judge from the specimens that overrun some of the oldest edifices of Europe, which are said to have been covered with it for centuries, and where the main stems are seen nearly as large as the trunk of a middle sized tree.

"Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,

And nations have scattered been;

But the stout old Ivy shall never fade

From its hale and hearty green;

The brave old plant in its lonely days,

Shall fatten upon the past;

For the stateliest building man can raise,

Is the Ivy's food at last."

The Ivy is not a native of America; nor is it by any means a very common plant in our gardens, though we know of no apology for the apparent neglect of so beautiful a climber. It is hardy south of the latitude of 42°, and we have seen it thriving in great luxuriance as far north as Hyde Park, on the Hudson, 80 miles above New-York. One of the most beautiful growths of this plant, which has ever met our eyes, is that upon the old mansion in the Botanic Garden at Philadelphia, built by the elder Bartram. That picturesque and quaint stone building is beautifully overrun by the most superb mantle of Ivy, that no one who has once seen can fail to remember with admiration. The