284, 



SKETCH OP THE CONIFEKS OF JAPAN. 



from the Cape of Good Hope, where' it was raised from seeds 

 v?hicli had been sent from China, and hence was named by him 



Massoniana. He had not been able to obtain any 

 fruit of it, nor any further information, 



Mr, Loudon places P, Masshniana as a synonym 

 of P. innaster, saying that ** Professor Don con- 

 siders it as only P. pinaster, IV hk'h IV e think venj 

 prohahle.'' A few pages further on, however, he 

 places it among those species which he *' cannot 

 refer with certainty to any of the other sections," 

 and there, he says, ** a tree a native of China, and 

 prohahhj identical with P. sinensis'' Mr. Gordon, 

 in his "Pinctum," follows him in placing it as a 

 synonym of P. pinaster, which, he tells us, is to 

 be found in China and Japan ; to which he adds, 

 '' No doubt introduced from Europe." What his 

 authority for saying that P. 7)2n<7-s^^r is found in 

 Japan is, he does not say, but as we now know 

 that it is not found in Japan at all, either intro- 

 duced or not introduced, one is driven to suppose 

 that he states it to be so on the strength of having 

 announced P. Massoniana to be a synonym of 

 P. pinaster. Mr. Loudon not having known the cones, for Siebold 

 and Zuccarini's figures and descriptions were not published until 

 after his work was finished, appears to have been misled by the 

 leaves figured by Lambert, which undoubtedly are so far like 

 Pinaster that they belong to the Pinaster section of firs, but 

 the cones only from 1 to 1^ inches in length, while those of 

 P, pinaster are from 4 to G inches long, as well as numerous 

 other differences, distinctly show that he was wrong, and ought 

 to have guarded Mr. Gordon from falling into this error in his 

 later work. Had he united P. Massoniana to P, densiflonh 

 it would not have been extraordinaiy, for these trees are s6 

 closely allied to each other, that it is with the greatest difficulty 

 that specific charactci-s can be found to distinguish them ; and, 

 as we shall presently show, there is reason to doubt whether 

 they are really distinct species or not; but Mr Gordon has made 

 the still more curious mistake of uniting the latter to P. pinea^ 

 the stone pine. 



The following arc the observations made by Siebold upon this 

 species in Japan. 



Of all the Conifers it is the most ^Yidely distributed in that 



Fig. 40. 



iA-. 



