While it is true that there is a struggle for life going on between various species of plants, and that in the struggle only the fittest survive, it has seemed to me equally true that certain plants love company. I am quite sure there are some that do better for growing together. As a rule, a pine hates solitude, and, whether it is one of its own kind, or one of some other species, so long as it is not alone, your pine tree rejoices when it has the sympathy of a companion. Many a planter of a "pinetum" has reported that this one or that one has not proved hardy (hardy being often a term including the results of all kinds of bad treatment), when one of the chief grounds of failure, was a too great degree of ground loneliness.

Certainly there are some species that have to grow together to such a degree that only their best efforts are displayed in fellowship, and of this I saw a few days ago a striking instance. It was in regard to the common periwinkle, Vinca minor, anent which, if you are a nurseryman, you must disguise your disgust when customers ask you for "myrtle." It is one of the grandest of dwarf evergreens when put under the drought of large trees. These, with their millions of water carriers in the earth, make it so dry, that often even grass will not grow, and the only green thing we can have is this periwinkle. It does not seem to care whether it has water or not. I never saw a spot too dry to conquer it. Now we have another shade-loving plant, the moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia), that loves shade, but does not love drouth. Put that under your dry-ground trees, and it languishes away. But don't it love to get in among the myrtle! Try it and see. The plot I saw was a magnificent sight! There was a round bed under a lot of old white pines. It would have been a blank desolate patch without it, and the beautiful flowers of the moneywort gave a charm to the periwinkle undescribable.

The tops of the periwinkle shoots came up through the mass of flowers, and looked for all the world as if a million of gold dollars were scattered over the bed. No doubt the owner would prefer this to the gold dollars ! I don't know, but truly, a bed of this kind was beyond all price.

Now why should this money-wort, which would not do well at all there alone in the dry, do so well when the ground must be actually dryer by having the moisture-sucking roots of the periwinkle as well as those of the pines to contend with ? I don't know ; perhaps though the ground itself was dryer, there was good moist air enclosed by the mass of periwinkle branches ; perhaps a good many other things. The fact remains that this companionship seemed to suit both, and the plot of periwinkle and moneywort, to my eyes, made one of the most agreeable and successful combinations I ever beheld. - Thomas Meehan, Philadelphia.