LETTER FROM MR. MACGILLIVRAY. 357 



chiefly on the margin of the woods, and in open places. Of the last 

 description of country great tracts (considering the size of the island, 

 which is only about eight miles in diameter) are covered with Fern 

 {Pteris and Mertensia), coarse Grass and Cyperacem. Among the trees 

 which give a character to the landscape, Eula^sa CooUi^ takes the first 

 place. This noLle Pine, worthy of the illustrious name it bears, is 

 naturally gregarious, but the largest individuals grow singly, or in 

 small clumps. I had no means of judging accurately of the height 

 which it sometimes attains, but estimate it as occasionally being as 

 much as 150 feet, with a girth of 10 to 12 feet near the ground. In 

 appearance this tree differs so much from E, exeeha, that I am sur- 

 prised how the two could have been considered as identical by the 

 botanists of Cook's voyage. Young trees growing in exposed places 

 sometimes assume, for awhile, the pyramidal form of the Norfolk 

 Island Pine, but the larger ones have all the branches short, and tlie 

 whole tree tapers very gradually to the summit, where it is often capped 

 by a mushroom-like terminal tuft of foliage. In one solitary instance 

 I saw the summit of a veiy tall'tree bifurcated. There is a veiy strik- 

 ing difference between the foliage of the young plant of E, CooJcii and 

 that of the tree. In the young stage, which resembles the similar con- 

 dition of E. excelsa, the branchlets are sent out on the same horizontal 

 plane, and the finely linear leaves, which do not touch each other, 

 although verticillate, appear to be distichous. In the adult the leaves 

 are broadly ovate, outwardly convex, and closely imbricated, the branch- 

 lets attaining a length of about 8 inches, and a diameter of between 

 0*2 and 0*4 inches. The largest male catkins which I have seen are 

 If inch long, and lanceolate; the smallest female cones are 2 inches 

 long, and elliptical, while the largest in my possession is 3J inches 

 long, and almost globular, with mucronate and revolute tips to the 

 scales. The younger female cones remind me of the heads of Bipsacus 

 fidlonnm. From incisions in the bark or cones a thick viscid fluid ex- 

 udes, and hardens into an amber-coloured gum, forming 



an amber-coloured gum, forming stalagmitic 

 masses. This will not burn in the fire, is not soluble in spirit, and 

 only partially so in water. The wood makes good planking, and small 

 spars without knots may be made out of the lower part of the trunk : 

 the upper is too full of knots to be useful where toughness is re- 



Domheya colmnnaris, "Foi'st. Prodr. — Araucaria Cookii, Br. Ms., A, columna- 

 ris. Hook. Bot. Mag. t, 4635. 



