Pinus 
cembra. 
13V ARBORETUM NOTES. 
CONIFER. 
below them. They are fine, large, picturesque 
trees, very bold in their form; having nothing of 
the compact and rather formal character which 
the Cembra exhibits in cultivation; but on the 
contrary, a freedom and wildness, quite in 
harmony with the Alpine scenes in which they. 
grow. They appear to be very old) them 
branches loaded with lichens; many of them are 
shattered and half dead, and some show life only 
in a few of their boughs. 
I did not see the Cembra on the Scheideck, and 
our guide affirmed that it is found nowhere in the 
Bernese Alps except on the Wengern Alp and 
the Grimsel. It is called Arve by the people of 
the country. 
Schimper* says that the Cembra which is 
sporadic, dispersed or collected into forests of small 
extent, along the chain of the Alps as far as the 
Carpathians, covers immense districts on the 
Ural, in the northern parts of Siberia, about the 
Altei, and in Kamschatka. 
Schimper moreover says, that this Pine is 
rapidly diminishing in numbers (‘ diminue presqu’ a 
vue d’oeil”’) on the mountains of Central Europe, 
where it formerly occupied extensive spaces (‘ des 
espaces”’ tres étendus);+ and he adds that, as this tree 
does not exist elsewhere in Europe, the species 
* Traité de Paléontologie Végétale, v. 2. 231. 
+ Tvaité Paléontologie Végétale, v. 1. 59. 
