236 The Scottish Naturalist. 



tree, I should think, would be some twenty-seven or twenty-eight years. It is 

 planted at the bottom of my garden in a situation where the roots can get 

 abundance of moisture at a depth of three or four feet. It has grown steadily 

 without a check ever since it was planted, and has attained a height of nearly 

 25 feet. The intense frost of December, 1859, which killed the large Araucaiias 

 in the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens and all the Araucarias in the nurseries of 

 this neighbourhood, did no perceptible injury to mine. This may have arisen 

 from its being well sheltered from the east by a screen of lofty hollies. In a 

 letter received from Mr. Fowler, gardener to the Earl of Stair, Castle Kennedy, 

 where there is perhaps the largest collection of Araucarias in Scotland, he 

 says: "If your plant proves to be a female one, the fact of its bearing cones 

 will be interesting, as I am not aware of any other plant in Scotland, as yet, 

 bearing cones, although several male plants have had catkins, some of which 

 were sent to me from a plant at Bergany, near Girvan, last year. The first in 

 England which bore cones and ripened seed was at Bicton, a good many years 

 ago. Although none of our Arau cartas have as yet either produced cones or 

 catkins, many of the other newer conifers are coning freely, and in some cases 

 ripening seed abundantly.'' In another part of his letter Mr. Fowler says: 

 ■' From your description of your fine Araucaria I cannot say whether it is a male 

 or a female plant. The male catkins are ovate-cylindrical, and grow in clusters 

 at the ends of the branches ; whereas the cones are solitary and erect, growing 

 from six to eight inches in height, and about the same in breadth, and are of a 

 dark -brown colour, with the scales regularly and closely imbricated.'' From 

 this description I am satisfied that mine is A. imbricatafcem. If you can find 

 space for this in the Scottish Naturalist it may interest some of your numerous 

 readers. Since writing the above, the following note by Mr. Andrew Murray, 

 F.L.S., a great authority on Coniferce, has been communicated to me: "As 

 to Mr. Fraser's inquiry about the Araucaria, I forget whether it has ever coned 

 in Scotland before. It is long since it has done so, abundantly, in England. 

 Until within the last twelve or eighteen months we used to consider it a 

 dioecious tree, that is, one with the male and female flowers on different indi- 

 viduals, and in the great majority of- cases it certainly is so ; but last year, or 

 the year before, some of the trees at Bicton began to have both male and female 

 flowers on the same tree. We also used to think the close-growing, strong, 

 pushing plants the females, and the more sparse and slighter-branched ones 

 the males ; but Mr. Barnes, who was gardener at Bicton, where the largest and 

 finest collection is, says that he could never find any character by which to 

 predicate whether a tree would bear the one kind of flowers or the other. This, 

 I believe, Mr. Fraser may accept ; but I would still regard the tree as dioecious, 

 notwithstanding the aberrant peculiarity of last year. I have seen the largest 

 tree at Dropmere covered with hundreds of male catkins, and not a single 

 female catkin among them ; and, generally speaking, the same has been the 

 case everywhere else."— James Fraser, Colvend Manse, 23d May, 1872. 



VARIOUS NOTES. 



Mr. C. P. Hobkirk, of Huddersfield, announces his intention, should be re- 

 ceive sufficient encouragement, of publishing a "Synopsis of British Mosses'' 

 containing descriptions of all the species known as natives of Britain. The 

 price to subscribers is 5s., and we hope that Mr. Hobkirk will not be obliged to 

 relinquish his scheme for want of support. Such a work is much needed. 



