MIGRANT OAKS.
It Will be an interesting point in science to watch the for- tunes of some of these young deciduous trees from Kew, the oaks as well as the "cricket willows." The native trees of Australia, especially the hundreds of species and varieties of the so-called gum tree, are ever-grey, adopt a half-weeping habit, and have acquired a queer trick of turning the edge of the leaf towards the sun. The result is that the commoner gum trees give the very minimum of shade. An Englishman can hardly believe that so many clothed boughs can consort with so slight a shadow. Our European trees, for the most Part. give the maximum, because the leaves have the contrary habit. They are jealous of the sunlight, and have found ways of making such a mosaic of leaves that each secures the full amount. The larger the leaf-surface the more of the sunshine i, compounded into chlorophyll, the elixir of the tree's life. The colour as well as the habit of Australian and English trees is contrasted. Graceful though the form is, how sadly dull arc those dowdy, grey-green, pendulous leaves compared with the vivid horizontal leaves of beech or oak !
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