COUNTRY LIFE
How many people are disappointed to find that their hollies are male and therefore bear no berries ; and there seem to be districts where the males most unwarrantably predominate. This is due, I infer from recent experience, to the readiness with which hollies will layer themselves. One bush in my _paddock has multiplied itself indefinitely. I could make a good hedge of the layers, and there is a tree in a neighbour's spinney which has surrounded itself with its own layers. Now all these are male hollies. The berried hollies do not so multiply for the very simple reason that they are pruned at the approach of every Christmas. But for the seedlings the berried plants would be progressively eliminated ; and these seedlings have enormously increased since the rabbit population has been whittled away. The bark of "the holly as of the ash is particularly agreeable to the rabbit, and neither has a chance where rabbits have sur- vived in any number. The ash reafforests itself with peculiar success in any wired-in enclosure and being nursed by its neighbours grows at a quite furious pace. The holly distributes itself very differently. Like the quick, it is encouraged in germination by its seed's passing through a bird, and you may find little dense plantations of small hollies in places used by birds as a private table One such place is under the low spreading branches of a lime, a snug spot where a bird can dine unobserved.
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