There is one peculiar beauty about the variegated holly, the tints of its young and tender leaves; these assume the most delicate shades of white, pink, and green, each differing from the other, and more resembling blossoms in their colouring than ordinary foliage. The young shoots with their bright leaves seem to attain slowly to their more mature colour, sometimes continuing for a whole summer to adorn the tree, and to afford a daily pleasure in watching their progress and admiring their variety. They are as attractive to young fingers as flowers; and one instance is recollected when a favourite shrub of this variety having begun to bud forth, after having been long deprived of free light and air, was ruthlessly stripped bare by a group of youngsters, who could see no harm in pulling leaves, although their consciences and the dread of the gardener might restrain them from plucking flowers.

Southey's well-known lines to the holly tree may find fit space here for quotation; indeed, all poetical allusions to our favourite shrubs and trees enhance our pleasure in them, by suggesting thoughts and images, or sometimes a moral, that might never have struck ourselves.

I.

"0 reader! bast thou ever stood to see

The Holly Tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceives

Its glossy leaves, Order'd by an Intelligence so wise As might confound the atheist's sophistries.

II.

"Below a circling fence, its leaves are seen

Wrinkled and keen; No grazing cattle through their prickly round

Can reach to wound; But as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear.

III.

"I love to view these things with curious eyes, And moralise : And in the wisdom of the Holly Tree

Can emblems see Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, One which may profit in the after time.

IV.

"Thus, though abroad I might appear Harsh and austere, To those who on my leisure would intrude,

Reserved and rude, Gentle at home amid my friends I 'd be, Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

V.

"And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know,

Some harshness shew, All vain asperities I day by day

Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

VI.

"And as when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The Holly leaves a sober hue display

Less bright than they, But when the bare and wintry woods we see What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree?

VII.

"So serious should my youth appear among

The thoughtless throng, So would I seem amid the young and gay

More grave than they, That in my age as cheerful I might be As the green winter of the Holly Tree."

Next to the holly we may place the Portugal laurel and the bay laurel as the most common ornaments of the shrubbery; for though in some situations the arbutus and sweet bay attain a large size, they are more delicate and not so common as those just named. The leaves of the Portugal laurel are almost as bright and glossy as our favourite holly; its growth is more compact than the laurel, and it is in some respects a hardier shrub, requiring less pruning, and growing frequently to a good size without losing the foliage of the lower branches. This feathering down to the ground is a great beauty in evergreen shrubs, and should be promoted by giving them room and air, as well as by judicious pruning. How frequently do we see fine specimens utterly spoiled by being cut away near the ground, the higher branches being allowed to grow out, till the shrub appears as if it would fall over on the spectator. Instead of this, a large laurel should present more the appearance of a sloping bank of foliage, or rather of a pyramid, with the lower branches down to the ground, and spreading out all round. An evergreen thus grown and pruned is a beautiful object, especially on a lawn.

With respect to the pruning of evergreens, it should be remembered that summer is the proper season for this operation, June or July; but it too often happens that at this busy period, when our gardens are bright with flowering bushes and smaller plants, our winter friends are forgotten and neglected, and so "upright growing sorts get round-headed forms, round-headed ones grow to one side, and all, and much more besides, for the want of the pruning-knife, or of the finger-and-thumb way of stopping, applied regularly at the proper season." So says Mr Beatoun, in the Cottage Gardener, where also he gives the following rules for pruning these valued ornaments of the garden:-

"One of the first fundamental rules in pruning evergreens is this, the lowest branches should be the longest, whatever the shape of the head may be. There is not a single exception to this rule that I know of; as soon as a higher branch is allowed to grow out further from the main stem of a tree, or from the general mass of branches on a bush, than the lower branches, a direct error is committed, and if not remedied by cutting in this longer branch, a sure foundation is laid for the destruction of the lower parts of the tree, which will in the long run cause it to get naked belowr, because the longer branch will shade the others, and throw off the rain from them.

"The second rule is, no leaf should be cut through in priming an evergreen. Clipping evergreen hedges does not come in under the rule of pruning.

"The last rule applies to the mode of cutting. No cut ends should be seen on bush or tree; and that is effected by beginning the cut on the opposite side to where you stand, and always cutting with an upstroke, then the cut part will either face downwards or towards the centre of the plant; and if you cut quite close to a lateral branch, or to the bottom of a leaf-stalk, as all good primers do in the summer, and as all the worst kind of primers do in the winter, I should like to know how I, or any body else, could find out, at a yard's distance, that your plant had been pruned at all."*

* Cottage Gardener, vol. vi., p. 226.

Another of our common favourites is the laurustinus, with its glossy leaves, rosy buds, and snowy flowers. It seems to have proved less hardy than it was once supposed to be, but, flowering as it does in winter, it is too valuable, as well as beautiful, to be willingly relinquished as an addition to our shrubberies. I do not know if there is any reason for the fact that another of our prettiest shrubs is always trained against a wall, instead of being allowed to grow as a bush - I mean the Pyracantha, or evergreen thorn; it is alike ornamental when covered with its clusters of white hawthorn-like blossoms, or adorned with a profusion of scarlet berries. It flowers in May, and bears its red fruit all winter, and would certainly be a most valuable addition to the garden or lawn.

In writing of evergreens, the ivy must not be omitted. Alike useful and ornamental, it grows where other plants cannot flourish, and seems equally happy and willing to embellish an unsightly wall or a noble tree; it may be so trained and pruned as to cause dull stone and lime to look like a rampart of living green, or when left to its own freedom, it will wreathe tree or pillar with its graceful sprays, truly repaying "The strength it borrows by the grace it lends."