=Privet=, as a covert plant, has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand it is cheap, easily grown, and not at all fastidious about soil. When planted amongst trees, however, it generally assumes a loose, straggling habit, and as the shade increases it usually dies out altogether. Where the plantations are well thinned and regularly kept so, privet, if a little care and trouble be expended on its cultivation, will succeed and form capital underwood. In planting privet the greatest care is necessary to prevent its being overdone. Close planting is always productive of the most unsatisfactory results, not only as regards the health of the plants, but management of the woods as well. Instead of filling up the whole ground, as is not unfrequently done, plant in small clumps, and these at wide distances apart, as this will not only allow the privet to grow more healthy and compact but also admit of space for pruning and layering—two necessaries for the successful cultivation of privet as underwood. The layering of privet, which is a simple and inexpensive though effectual method of increase, is performed as follows:—Cut off all the branches, except those intended for layering, which are then laid flat on the ground equidistant around the main stem or root and kept fast by hooked pegs driven firmly down. A spadeful or two of soil should then be placed on the top of each peg, which will partly exclude air and hasten the formation of roots. The pegs may be made of any refuse branches—hard wood, such as ash or oak, being preferable—about 10 ins. in length, one end being hooked for holding the branches in position, and the other sharply pointed for ease in driving. As several forms of privet have crept into circulation of late, it is well to be sure that none but the true evergreen are used in the formation of game coverts. The oval-leaved privet, though a most desirable evergreen plant and well suited for ornamental hedges, is from its too luxuriant growth and upright form hardly to be commended for underwood; at least, its merits in this respect are inferior to those of the common form.