A NEW SPECIES OF ARAUCARIA. 501 
fall off in great numbers. Some of the old trees growing in 
woods are 150 feet high, and a few are about 200 feet. The 
trunks of three on Mount Pitt, Norfolk Island, measured 
23, 27, and 29} feet in circumference, at 4 feet up. The two 
lips of the scales of the cone become united and form a lig- 
neous covering to the seeds; external to this is a fleshy, 
terebinthaceous coat, containing a milky resinous juice; 
the cone resembles a globular pine apple in form, and has 
the scales deciduous. Large quantities of resin, like frank- 
incense, are exuded from incisions in the bark. The timber 
is useful for inside work, but it soon perishes when exposed 
to the weather, especially as posts in the ground. The knots 
formed by the larger limbs of old trees which lose in some 
measure their regularity of form, are close grained, and afford 
handsome material for turning and inlaying. Under the bark 
of dead trees grubs of certain beetles feed in great quantities, 
making a noise in gnawing their way in some trees that have 
not long been felled, like a shower of rain. "These afford food 
on Phillip Island, on which as well as on Nepean and Norfolk 
Islands, down to the margins of the cliffs, where the sea 
sometimes breaks, these trees abound with a singular bird of 
the parrot tribe, with long mandibles, and having some re- 
semblance to a hawk. This bird is easily captured, and is 
not now found on Norfolk Island, but may have been des- 
troyed there. In the woods the Norfolk Island Pine towers 
a hundred feet above the other trees ; it is not so lofty in the 
smaller clumps on the open hills, nor when solitary. Trees 
of this species planted in Sydney first produced cones in 
1837." 
A very interesting group of these trees is represented on 
a plate by Mr. Backhouse in his excellent * Narrative of a 
visit to the Australian colonies." 
An Araucaria a good deal resembling this at first sight and 
supposed to be the same, was seen by Sir Joseph Banks and 
Dr. Solander on the east coast of New Holland, in Cook's 
first voyage in 1770, and was naturally supposed to be the 
same species with that examined on Norfolk Island; but it 
VOL. II. 2N 
