WHEN winter grips our land it is fitting to discourse about the sweet and refreshing pine trees which are especially associated in northern climes with the celebration of Christmas. The delicious perfume which they diffuse is destructive both of microbes and noxious insects, whilst they are always linked in our minds with glorious mountain-sides or breezy moorland, or the delightful sand dunes and grey rocks of the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. The decoration of trees on days of festival and joyful celebration with garlands, lamps, and gifts is an immemorial custom of mankind, and it is probably merely the accident of its being convenient in shape, evergreen, cleanly, and sweet-smelling that has led to the selection of the common spruce as the "Christmas tree." It was not until the reign of Queen Victoria that the custom of bringing a young spruce fir into the house, growing in its special flowerpot, and then decorating it and making it the centre of a children's festival, became established in England. The 25th of December was celebrated in pre-Christian times in Northern Europe as the beginning of the New Year, and it was only after much opposition adopted by the Roman Church in the sixth century as a feast day in celebration of the birth of Christ. The Puritans rejected it as idolatrous, but its observance was restored by Charles II. In Scotland it is still ignored, and in Latin countries presents (_strenæ_, or in French _les étrennes_) are given on New Year's Day and not on Christmas Day.