The European Mountain ash is quite a favorite with cultivators here, and deservedly so. Its foliage is extremely neat, its blossoms pretty, and its blazing red berries in autumn communicate a cheerfulness to the season, and harmonize happily with the gay tints of our native forest trees. It is remarkably well calculated for small plantations or collections, as it grows in almost any soil or situation, takes but little room, and is always interesting. "In the Scottish Highlands," says Gilpin, "on some rocky mountain covered with dark pines and waving birch, which cast a solemn gloom on the lake below, a few Mountain ashes joining in a clump and mixing with them, have a fine effect. In summer the light green tint of their foliage, and in autumn the glowing berries which hang clustering upon them, contrast beautifully with the deeper green of the pines: and if they are happily blended, and not in too large a proportion, they add some of the most picturesque furniture with which the sides of those rugged mountains are invested." We have seen the Mountain ash, here, displaying itself in great beauty, mingled with a group of hemlocks, from among the deep green foliage of which, the coral berries of the former seemed to shoot out; their color heightened by the dark back ground of evergreen boughs.
