The Natural History of Selborne

Grass grows very fast.  Honey-suckles very fragrant, & most beautiful objects!  Columbines make a figure.  My white thorn, which hangs over the earth-house, is now one sheet of bloom, & has pendulous boughs down to the ground.  One of my low balm of Gilead firs begins to throw out a profusion of cones;  a token this that it will be a short-lived, stunted tree.  One that I planted in my shrubbery began to decay at 20 years of age.  Miller in his gardener’s Dictionary mentions the short continuance  of this species of fir, & cautions people against depending on them as a permanent tree for ornamental plantations.