The Monkey Puzzle
Now and again, in the grounds of an estate or in the centre of a lawn of a large house, 1 have looked at the tree commonly called a mon- key puzzle tree, and its strange growth has always interested me. I had no idea that it could grow to a great height, or look so beautiful when as tall as a great yew or a pine, until I discovered the remains of a wood on the back road from one village to another. l noticed the laurel and yews, and then my attention was taken by the giant monkey puzzle trees. The dead branches seemed red in the sunlight. The living ones above. -swaying and rising and falling in the wind, were a delightful green. The shadows they cast on the road were a subject for an artist in black and white. Thc row of trees stands alone in a barren pace where there was once a belt of conifers. Why the monkey puzzles were planted in the first place I cannot imagine. As far as I know there is no mansion close at hand, and they could not have been put down on much higher ground, or a place more exposed than the one in which they are growing; but they are as handsome as the stateliest yew or cedar. and as foreign as the deodar.
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