According to an old Indian treatise on gardening, five trees should be first planted, as they are luck bringing-phalsa (Grewia asiatica), bhila or marking-nut tree, punag (Rottlera tinctoria), sirisha (Mimosa Sirissa), and nim (Melia Azardir-achia); after this, plantations of any kind can be made. The auspicious sides for planting are: on the east the bur (Ficus indica) and karanda (Carissa Carandas); on the south gular (Ficus glomerata) and bambu; on the west amalaka (Emblica officinalis) and bila (Aegle Marmelos); on the north pakar (Ficus infectoria), bhor (Zizyphus Jujuba), and kaitha (Feronica Ele-phanium). The bur tree should not be planted at the gate of the house or in such a place that the shadow of it may fall on the building. All large trees are inauspicious within the house, i.e. in the central courtyard, particularly those of a thorny nature-a sensible rule, as is that which prescribes the cool north side of the mansion as the most propitious on which to lay out the garden. If the 'nim-tree'-one of the 'lucky' trees above mentioned-'be planted around the garden, other trees will be greatly benefited by its influential air,' so says the Hindu author, and no doubt he is perfectly right. These graceful nim-trees, with their leaves so like a mountain-ash, and their bunches of green berries, are among the most decorative as well as the most useful trees. In fact the nim may be called the eucalyptus of India, from all the uses to which it is put. Not only does their 'influential air' benefit the garden, not only do their branches placed in large vases decorate so prettily Anglo-Indian drawing-rooms, but their dried leaves strewn under bungalow rugs and carpets keep off the dreaded white ants, and laid like lavender among clothes and along bookshelves they frighten away the rapacious, all-devouring cockroaches. Among Indians its medicinal uses are endless, and in illness boughs are hung over the door, very much as we in England might hang up a sheet steeped in a disinfectant.
