128 Dr. Arnott on the Genus Torreya. 



and Sprengel's description of the foliage is too imperfect to 

 permit of its being referred with certainty to any described 

 species. It approaches most to one in Sir W. J. Hooker's 

 herbarium from the east coast of South Africa. Sprengel 

 mentions that it was collected by M. Perrin in Brasil : Dr. 

 Torrey, who sent it to Sprengel, informs me that this must be 

 a mistake, as M. Perrin only botanised in Guadaloupe and 

 the neighbouring islands. 



About the same time that I received the above-mentioned 

 specimen, Dr. Torrey wrote me as follows : 



" Did I tell you of a beautiful and new Taxoid tree from 

 Middle Florida? It was discovered about three years ago 

 by my esteemed friend H. B. Croom, Esq., of Tallahassee. 

 Although so abundant about Aspalaga that it is sawed into 

 planks and timber, no description of it has hitherto been pub- 

 lished. A small specimen, without flowers or fruit, which 

 Mr. Croom, soon after he discovered the plant, sent to Phila- 

 delphia, was seen by Mr. Nuttall, who supposed it was the 

 Taxus montana, or Podocarpus taxifolius, Rich., and he inserted 

 a very brief notice of the plant in the 7th vol. part i. of the 

 Journal of the Philadelphia Academy. I received a duplicate 

 specimen from Mr. Croom about the same time ; but it was 

 impossible for me to determine the plant without the organs 

 of fructification. About a year afterwards I received the male 

 flowers, and more lately Mr. Croom kindly sent me the fruit 

 preserved in spirits. It is evidently one of the Taxinece, (be- 

 longing to Richard's second subdivision of the family, with 

 erect flowers,) and must form a new genus : it differs from 

 Podocarpus by the erect fertile flowers, and from Taxus by 

 the want of the fleshy enlarged cup or disc in which the seed 

 of that genus is immersed, and by the anthers being four- 

 lobed and dimidiate, and inserted by a pedicle on an axis 

 which is at length elongated. It is a tree of from six to 

 eighteen inches in diameter, and from twenty to forty feet 

 high, with numerous spreading branches, the ramuli dividing 

 trichotomously : its appearance at a distance is not unlike 

 that of Pinus canadensis. The wood is dense and close- 

 grained, heavy for one of this family, and in old trees of a 



