A NEW SPECIES OF ARAUCARIA. 499 
none has excited so much interest among botanists and 
cultivators as the several species of Araucaria, whether their 
vast size be considered, the singularity of their branches and 
foliage, stiff and rigid indeed in some, but graceful almost as 
ostrich feathers in others, (especially the A. excelsa), or the 
circumstance of their inhabiting only the southern hemis- 
phere; each kind being confined to certain and rather res- 
tricted limits. The first that was known to Europeans was 
the A. imbricata, Sir Joseph Banks’, or Chili Pine, which 
rears its lofty summit to a height of 150 feet among the 
mountains of Southern Chili, only in the interior, and as it 
appears only on the southern slopes of the Andes, so re- 
mote from any settlement that I never met with a traveller 
who had seen the tree in its native forests, nor heard of any 
that had been so privileged, save Ruiz and Pavon who first 
described it, and the accomplished German naturalist, Dr. 
Póppig, whose highly interesting account of this tree I have 
given in the first volume of the * Companion to the Bota- 
nical Magazine," p. 357, &c. to which I must refer my readers. 
The excellent Menzies had the honour of introducing this noble 
tree to Europeinalivingstate. The large seeds are eaten not 
only by the natives, but by the Spanish Americans at Valpa- 
raiso ; and it was at the table of the Governor of that capital 
or of some official character, that Mr. Menzies was struck 
with their appearance, as those of some new Pine, and request- 
ed permission to take some with him. These he planted in 
1795, on board Captain Vancouver's ship, and five young 
plants were reared and brought to the Royal Gardens of Kew. 
There they flourished, and all, but one, have been given away 
(the last in 1841 to her present Majesty, Queen Victoria, 
for the pleasure grounds at Windsor); and that remaining 
is at once the pride and ornament of this establishment, and 
has for the third time borne cones, but which though they 
have attained to a large size, for want of male flowers, have 
proved abortive and imperfect. To us this species is the 
more important, as being the only one that proves sufficiently 
hardy to bear the winters of our climate, and hitherto the 
severest frosts have done it no injury ; and seeds have been 
