the estate of the Earl of Elgin, Dumphail, near Nairn. 
The specimens were forwarded to Kew by Messrs. D. 
Stalker & Son. It is believed to be the first occasion on 
which this Japanese Silver Fir has produced cones in this 
country. 
Deser.—A tall, pyramidal tree, with robust, spreading 
branches like those of A. nordmanniana; younger branches 
covered with a coarse, brownish, hairy epidermis, which 
peels off in chaff-like scales; older glabrous, marked with 
circular scars, pulvini only slightly prominent. Leaves on 
main branches multiseriate, appressed and evenly dis- 
posed around the stem; pseudo-4-ranked on younger 
sterile ones, lateral leaves spreading, those on upper surface 
appressed parallel to the long axis of the shoot ascending 
on the fertile shoots, and somewhat shorter than lateral. 
Leaves about one inch in length, one-sixteenth of an inch 
in breadth, linear-oblong, obtuse or slightly notched at 
the apex, tapering and twisted towards the base, glabrous 
above, with a depressed midrib, glaucous beneath, with a 
raised midrib, and recurved margins. Hypoderm con- 
tinuous, resin canals one near each corner of the leaf, 
just beneath the epidermis. Male flowers unknown. 
Cones clustered on the sides of the branches, erect, three 
inches and a half to five inches and a half long, one and a 
half to two inches wide, dull purple, cask-shaped. Scales 
suborbicular, entire, wedge-shaped at the base, covered 
with a reddish down when young. Bracts half the length 
of the scales, and concealed by them, obovate-oblong, 
retuse, with a small, deciduous central acumen, edge of the 
bract finally jagged.* Seeds nearly as long as the scale ; 
wing wedge-shaped, entire, somewhat truncate.—M. T. 
Masters. 
Fig. 1, section of leaf showing the position of the resin canals; 2, scale of 
cone with bract ; 3, bract enlarged ; 4, 5, seeds :—all enlarged. 
* As shown in the figure in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, but in Maries’ n. 73 
the bracts are precisely as here figured. 
